How Rugby's 'School of Rock' is helping youngsters into the limelight - The Rugby Observer

How Rugby's 'School of Rock' is helping youngsters into the limelight

Rugby Editorial 13th May, 2017 Updated: 24th Jun, 2021   0

A MUSIC mogul is showing talented youngsters there is an alternative to the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ X-Factor route to stardom.

Big Help Management’s School-of-Rock-style approach has helped it become the UK’s leading artist development company for teenagers.

Founder Dutch Van Spall, who acts as director of artist development from his Rugby home, was inspired to take fledgling artists under his wing in the 90s, when the Observer ran a story about a young singer who attempted suicide after appearing on a TV talent show.

Dutch, who previously lived near Southam, has worked in the music industry for nearly 30 years, during which time he gave tuition to young musicians, wrote hit songs for the likes of Toyah Wilcox, and formed his own record label.




But his greatest success stories were born from a backlash against the instant fame offered by reality TV – which he described as “putting young people on camera and bullying them until they cry”.

He said: “There was a young girl from Leamington on one of those shows. Unfortunately, they provided no after-care for the young people on the show.


“This girl was then bullied at school, and she tried to take her own life.

“It made me quite cross. I thought, this is my industry as well, and there’s a bunch of television people actually ruining it because then they’ll be kids out there thinking ‘this is what the music industry is’, and it isn’t – or at least, it wasn’t then!

“I got a call from (Observer editor) Ian Hughes who said he was running the story – was there anything I could do? I realised I needed to do something positive locally.”

So he invited the girl and her mother to visit him, made a record for her and released it on CD.

“We said ‘go back to school and shove these under the noses of the people who are bullying you’. We also managed to find a couple of concerts for her to perform at.

“It gave her back her self-esteem, and it rekindled her love of music.”

Since then, Big Help has gone from strength to strength – Ffion Rebecca has knocked Rag ‘n’ Bone Man off the top of the iTunes album chart, Kellimarie Willis featured on CBBC series Right Now, and artists have appeared on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show.

Big Help singers have even appeared on every series of X-Factor and The Voice.

“It’s not for us to puppet-master their lives, they make their own decisions,” said Dutch. “We don’t want to throw them to the dogs, so we give them training and support.

‘Support’ is a key word in Dutch’s vocabulary, along with ‘holistic’ and ‘bespoke’.

He says Big Help teaches its young charges all the skills of being an artist – how to sing a song, how to get the best out of their voice, the correct choice of song, instrument training, microphone technique, recording techniques, getting rid of performance nerves – “all the skills you require to walk out from the wings to that scary place in the centre of the stage and deliver that song.

“We treat our academy artists as if they were a professional artist. We make sure their social network sites are running, and we monitor their pages, so if there are any nasty messages we delete them before the artist sees them.

“We also teach them techniques of dealing with ‘trolling’, because they are going to encounter it. There are ways of dealing with it that doesn’t involve confrontation.”

He also finds opportunities for his singers to perform live – difficult for young artists because “everybody discounts them because of their age”.

“Because I’ve been doing it for so long, they know that even though I’m sending them a young person, they know they’ll be good – otherwise I wouldn’t send them. If somebody isn’t ready, we don’t put them out there.”

And despite public perceptions of London as the home of the music industry, Dutch – born in Coventry and raised in Leamington and Warwick – has resisted relocating his business to the capital.

“I’m keen we retain our roots. The midlands is where we were born, and this is where the talent is.

“It’s almost impossible for an artist to break through in London. You’ve got to become a hero in your own postcode first.”

Dutch concludes by explaining his greatest triumphs have not been quantified by record sales or crowd sizes, but by the effect his training has had on people’s personalities.

“Our biggest achievement is changing the lives of the young people for the better,” he said.

“When we first started I thought we’ve got to get somebody to number one, or to the Brit Awards. But having worked with them, they teach you that’s not what it’s about.

“Creative young people usually have a good reason why they want to sing – because they have something to say and can’t do it any other way.

“We’ve seen young people come through who have had massive challenges in their lives.

“When they’re here with the other young people we train, they are – sometimes for the first time in their lives – with a peer group that is actually supportive, and not bullying them or trying to put them down.

“And that builds confidence.

“When people come back to us years later and tell us what they’re doing now, and how we helped them find confidence and empower themselves, it’s very uplifting.”

Visit www.bighelpmusic.com for more information.

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