Dear FSOR Staff, Students, Alumni, Families, and Friends,
We are sharing very sad news today that after 95 courses, music charity Felix’s School of Rock is now permanently closed. After the pandemic, we set out to secure a new home base for FSOR, landed at Shooters Hill College briefly, and we were unable to stay there, or secure a viable alternative. We apologise for this.
Inspired by the 2003 Jack Black film School of Rock, Felix Glenn founded FSOR in 2004. Health concerns forced Felix to step down after 9 or 10 years. Baz Golin was already on board as a tutor to take on a leadership role, alongside business manager Alyson McGarrigle.
We have given almost 3000 kids the chance to play in a real band, perform in videos and on stage, and many students chose to do more than one course with us. Over 100 students became FSOR assistants and 15-20 of them went on to become FSOR tutors. We referred over 50 students to the Brit School. Many FSOR grads are now professional musicians. 6 FSOR students starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School Of Rock The Musical.
We continue to hear and see FSOR students (and staff!) playing at Royal Albert Hall, The Hammersmith Apollo, Brixton Academy, on BBC2’s Later with Jools Holland, on the Brit Awards, on tours in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East, and some are independent artists with huge followings on YouTube and other social media. We weren’t in the business to create all this success, we were just trying to give kids a great musical experience, learn about playing in a band, teamwork, arranging songs, the technology involved in rehearsals and live performance, and to make new friends.
Hopefully we’ve helped a generation or two of Southeast London kids get joy from making music with others, whether professionally of just for fun.
Our efforts to reboot were met with very little support from the education sector. The schools are in such a dire strait after 14 years of cuts and an exclusive focus on STEM subjects above all else, that FSOR and many other arts subjects are suffering in the British education system. The future of all musicians, artists, actors, and production teams are under threat from budget cuts and AI in the current climate.
We intend to wrap everything up by the end of December. Our adult choir, JukeVox Voices will continue under Baz as a separate entity. Many of our staff will still be doing private lessons and some will be doing in school tuition. We will be donating most of our instruments and music equipment to various local music charities, organisations, schools and our tutors in the coming weeks.
Our website and email will remain online until the end of 2024 in case you need to contact us about anything FSOR.
We are heartbroken that this great programme has come to an end. We wish all the FSOR family, friends and staff great musical adventures no matter what gets in the way.
Baz, Alyson & the FSOR Team
