Last night I was at O2 Arena for the launch of Voices for a Better World, a project to raise funds for dedicated children’s charities Global Angels and Arts by Children - two international organisations which work at a grass-roots level to support the needs of children around the world. The architecturally unlovely, noisy, crowd-pulling Disney-esque dome - with its weird ideas about courtesy (or lack of it) to the press, inadequate lavatories and inconvenient access is not exactly my favourite venue but all my frustrations and grumbles were stopped short by the scale and power of the event itself once it started.

Kevin Dowsett, founder of Theatretrain — the very successful chain of franchised part-time stage schools for children — devised and directed the pretty spectacular show, The Long and Winding Road, which is based on the Beatles story and featured 34 Beatles tracks, including Ticket to Ride, A Hard Day’s Night and Can’t Buy Me Love. The massed chorus sang, conducted by the larger-than-life Robert Hyman with live orchestra, and there were solo numbers by youngsters who had auditioned and some short contributions by professionals such as Bill Bailey, Kevin Eldon, Cheryl Fergison, Elaine Glover, Tony Hirst and Nemsis.

But this was not a Theatretrain production. This time the main body of performers was 4,700 school children, aged 9-14, from primary, secondary, special and specialist schools in London and the south east. So it was quite a training experience for very large numbers and highly inclusive.

Here’s some potentially rather good news. Two Somerset organisations are getting together to make sure that performing arts students can have hands-on training locally. Somerset College and The Brewhouse Theatre & Arts Centre in Taunton are sharing resources in a new partnership.

It will mean that students at the College gain experience of working in a professional theatre as part of their course. The idea is that they will learn about the technical side of mounting a performance as well as learning the creative side by performing to paying audiences in the theatre.

So what’s in it for the Brewhouse — a go-ahead but threatened venue in a pretty setting, which I visited last year to take part in a training seminar? Quite a lot, it seems. The riverside arts centre will be able to call upon the Operating Theatre Company — second year students studying the National Diploma in Performing Arts at the College — as its own theatre company. So it can mount high quality shows which are part of the education scene at low cost - an attractive prospect for any arts organisation.

Suppose you are a 14 year old. You’re very good at design technology and at the carpentry and other skills which go with it. You are also passionate about theatre and have had roles in a few school plays. You love the buzz but you know you don’t have enough talent to make it as a performer. Have you thought about taking your practical, making skills into the entertainments industry? What about a career as a set or scenery builder?

Sadly such connections don’t occur very readily to most careers teachers and advisers so you may not have thought of it.

It’s good to hear of provision being made for a usually unnoticed group. If you are young and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) or have an LGBT family then you might be feeling a bit isolated.

Enter a new, one-week youth theatre designed for kids aged 11-14 with LGBT families. Based at the Drill Hall in London and funded by London Councils and Camden Council it costs participants just a nominal £50.

During the week the children will work together as a group to make a short piece of theatre to be presented to family and friends at the end of the week. Running from 27-31 July and directed by Barcy Cogdale, it could be a fantastic opportunity to meet new people, learn new skills and act in a professional theatre.

There are no auditions for this but, Barcy Cogdale says, you do ‘need to be enthusiastic, want to work hard and have fun.’ Application forms are available by emailing dhyt@drillhall.co.uk or calling 020 7307 5060.

There is also a similar two week youth theatre option directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair for 16-19s from 27 July to 07 August. The charge is £80 because, as for the under-14s summer school, there is funding from London Councils and Camden Council,

This group welcomes everyone, regardless of whether they are ‘gay, black, lesbian, Asian, bisexual, white, queer, straight or whatever.’ Beadle-Blair says: ‘The only criterion is that they must love performing.’

During the two-week summer school, teenagers will have the chance to experience the behind-the-scenes atmosphere of a professional theatre. They will perform theatre exercises, explore improvisation, text, movement and voice skills, and look at how different types of people are represented in modern and Shakespearian texts. At the end of the two weeks, participants can show off what they have learnt to their families and friends in The Drill Hall theatre.

For the 16-19s programme, The Drill Hall is holding group auditions at the beginning of July - email dhyt@drillhall.co.uk or call 020 7307 5060 for an application form.

Julie Parker, The Drill Hall’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive, said: ‘We are proud to be one of Camden’s flagship venues. Through our education work, we have produced an exceptional programme for schools and young people that addresses homophobia and its consequences. This has included Grace Barnes’s adaptation of Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, for which Cathy Tyson won Best Actress in a Visiting Production at the Manchester Evening News Awards.’

She continued: ‘We are particularly proud of FIT, written and directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, which toured to schools and young people’s organisations throughout London and the UK. We were overwhelmed by interest and will be touring this outstanding play again later this year.’

If you are aged 16 to 25 with a creative idea that that you want to take further — perhaps a play to mount, work you want to commission, something you’d like to take to Edinburgh or whatever — then you have until the end of this month to apply for a grant from IdeasTap.

Part of the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust, IdeasTap is an interactive platform — in effect, an online magazine — that works with many partners including The Old Vic, National Youth Theatre and Polka Theatre. ‘Our aim is to be a catalyst for the development of creativity in young people,’ Paul Sternberg, Chief Executive (Arts) at the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust, told me.

The forum - which has 10,000 signed up members, two thirds of whom are primarily interested in performing arts - allows young creative entrepreneurs and artists to promote their skills, meet new people, take part in live creative briefs and search for new work and opportunities. About 3,000 members are actively involved in IdeasTap education programmes either online or on the ground. So if you haven’t yet discovered this you may be missing something really useful.

And now IdeasTap is piloting a new £50,000 Ideas Fund. It wants to find young people who have original interesting ideas which they are not quite sure what to do with. I meet plenty of these on my travels around schools, drama schools, festivals and other arts events. Sadly most of their ideas wither on the vine for lack of funding - and that’s what the new fund is trying to prevent. So it’s jolly good news in my view.

But - and there is always one - there is bound to be a lot of competition and, although most welcome, £50,000 is not a huge amount to share. A judging panel drawn from the Old Vic, Tate Britain, Channel 4 and National Youth Theatre along with IdeasTap members will select the best.

Grants of £500, £1,000 and £5,000 are available. So do the maths. The number of winners has to be between 10 and 100 which isn’t all that many given all the talent out there. But remember that chap with the allotment who won £25 million on the lottery this week? Well, these things happen. He wouldn’t have won if he hadn’t bought a ticket. And if you have an outstanding idea you stand a much better chance than a random lottery winner.

Anyone who gets a £5,000 IdeasTap award will also get mentoring and professional development advice provided by IdeasTap partners so, for the best, this really is quite a training opportunity. What are you waiting for?

I’m talking to Sue Roberston, now nearing the end of her first year as principal of Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in Haringey. I’m curious to know where she comes from and where she’s going.

It’s an impressive CV which includes having been Chief Executive of London Arts, Executive Director of Southern Arts, Director of Education Programmes at the South Bank and Senior Education Officer at the (then) Arts Council of Great Britain. Robertson is also Vice Chair of Soho Theatre, a trustee of Shakespeare’s Globe and a board member at the Barbican. She has twice served on the Olivier Awards judging panel. For five years before going to Mountview, she was Dean of the School of Arts at London’s City University.

Four months into her new job Robertson, 56, was given a Christmas gift by her staff and students. It was a star inscribed ‘Most promising newcomer’ which now sits proudly on her desk.

The feeling seems to be mutual. ‘It’s a wonderful place and nothing I was told in advance was exaggerated,’ she says bubbling with praise for Mountview’s good focus on individual students — easily lost in bigger universities.

So what, I ask her, has impressed her particularly?

Three good training opportunities, which you might find useful, are coming up at the National Theatre this month and next. Simon Callow will talk about Acting in Restoration Comedy on Friday June 19 at the Olivier. There’s a talk on Acting in High Comedy by Maria Aitken on Wednesday July 8 in the Lyttelton, and Janet Suzman completes the series on Friday July 10 with Acting in Shakespearean Comedy, also in the Lyttleton.

The Acting Series… Revisited harks back to the BBC series of acting masterclasses in the 1980s which featured a stellar line-up of Maria Aitken, Michael Caine, Simon Callow, Brian Cox, Jonathan Miller and Janet Suzman, working with young actors on acting in particular genres.

Now, twenty years later, some of the ‘masters’ (and mistresses?) are revisiting their topics and looking back to see how their work and approach have changed - or not - and share their thoughts on contemporary acting with extracts from the original series.

• The BBC Acting Series: The Complete 6 DVD Set from Amazon.co.uk

The Spotlight Casting Symposium ‘09 on June 27 — part of Scotland Actor Expo — sounds pretty good too. An international panel of top casting directors will speak about the process of casting actors in the Internet age.

The discussion is billed to focus on how Scottish actors can break into the international scene, and the importance of the internet in casting and actor marketing. In the online age, casting happens faster than ever, with almost 100% of submissions made online. The idea is that you learn from a panel of experts about how to get an edge in marketing and presentation through Internet sources.

The two-hour symposium from 3.30-5.30 is at the Bistro in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange and will include a one-hour question-and-answer session with casting directors taking questions from the audience. Spotlight’s Will Davies will be in the chair with panelists Nancy Bishop (US/Prague), Kathleen Crawford, (Scotland), Andy Pryor, Suzanne Smith and Emma Style, (all London).

Spotlight is sponsoring this symposium following the success of previous events in Edinburgh (2008) and Dublin (2009).

It would be good to hear from anyone who attends any of these training events. Tell us how you found them and whether we should press for more of this sort of thing.

Are you an ambitious young performer wanting to know more about the industry, how to get started and to progress? Well now is your chance. And it won’t cost you anything except effort.

This week (8-11 June) is Young Performer Week and it really is a fine opportunity for all aspiring professionals to get clued up. The first lesson, probably - and for some it will be the hardest - is to understand that there’s a great deal more to training for lasting, successful performance careers than appearing in TV talent shows such as Britain’s Got Talent.

The good news is that Young Performer Week is a free online event. It is designed to be as accessible as possible. The range of advice and resources on offer is really impressive. For example every young performer who registers at www.youngperformerweek.com will get unlimited access to:

• Expert advice on the performing arts from leading professionals
• Performer podcasts to help young performers develop their skills
• Opportunities with the UK’s top arts organisations
• Information on the performing arts schools and youth theatre offering key training
• Competitions for young performers to win an exclusive range of prizes

Director of Young Performer Week, Maxwell David, said:

Like millions around the world, I love to watch shows like the X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and I’m always staggered by the number of people who have the confidence to get up on stage. However, I start to get worried when I meet young people who think the only way to achieve success on the stage is to get on a TV show. This year’s Young Performer Week will begin to resolve this.

Young Performer Week is a collaboration between National Theatre, UK Guide to Performing Arts, DanceXchange and Trinity College of Music among others. The aim is to reach out to many thousands of young people nationwide. So what are you waiting for?

And once you’ve accessed it, we at The Stage and other readers of this blog would be really interested to hear how you got on. So leave a comment here.

I’m at the MacOwan Theatre at Earls Court courtesy of LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art). It is ‘only’ a student production put together in five weeks - so I haven’t come with high expectations - but, in the event, I’m thoroughly enjoying this musical version of Passports to Pimlico performed by the 28 students who are just completing their two year acting course.

Written by Stephen Smith (book and lyrics) and Anthony Ingle (composition and additional lyrics) at the invitation of LAMDA principal Peter James, Passports to Pimlico - loosely based on TEB Clarke’s screenplay for the famous Ealing Comedy - is part of LAMDA’s 2009 New Writing Project.

In the past LAMDA plays commissioned this way — Mother Clap’s Molly House by Mark Ravenhill, for example, which later ran to great acclaim at the National Theatre in 2001 — have been successfully taken up elsewhere. It is quite possible that this jolly but poignant, ultra-English piece set in the 1947 heat wave, complete with rationing, a royal wedding, austerity and bloody-mindedness will do likewise - not least because of Ingle’s resonant, clever, often parodic music with its echoes of, for instance, Sullivan, Elgar and Coates.

And there are some outstanding individual performances in the strong ensemble. Katie Scarfe who plays Mollie with such sensitive intelligence must surely be at the beginning of a good career. I warmly admire Nicholas Taylor as Mr Wix and Michael Bryher as Frank Huggins too - although I’m not here to review the show. I’m just a hack who sees a lot of theatre and it is, generally, the entertainment factor which I rate rather than the industrial usefulness of a drama school training production.

Nevertheless, as I strode towards Earls Court Station and the District Line humming to myself afterwards I found myself thinking about how schools should or do present their ‘product’ to the industry. LAMDA’s Passports to Pimlico had a run of nine performances. I saw the penultimate one and there were several agents and other ‘talent spotters’ in the audience. The students had had time to bed their performances in. They were confident and professional, appeared to be enjoying themselves, and we really did get the chance to see what they can do. And it is impressive.

Compare that with the tortured, nerve racking, - almost confrontational - experience which is what too many drama school showcases turn out to be and ask yourself which is the better way of judging someone’s ability. On the other hand every actor has to be able to audition - against substantial odds - and deal with rejection. Are showcases, which are really only a series of auditions, a good way of preparing for that?

Perhaps, more crucially, schools should be asking the industry - all those agents, casting directors, talent scouts and the rest - how it wants new talent presented. More ‘proper’ shows, differently managed showcases, something quite different or stick to the status quo? Some thoughts here would be good too.

It’s what starry-eyed teenagers fresh from the latest uplifting episode of Britain’s Got Talent really mean when they tell their no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground careers teachers that they want a job ‘in the performing arts.’

Unfortunately working in television is not like becoming a doctor, bus driver or supermarket manager. There is no agreed career path or training and the bad news is that over 70% of hopefuls rely on contacts even to get a toe through the door. So if you don’t have contacts where on earth do you start? The careers teachers and advisers don’t know the answer any more than the teenagers do.

But Elsa Sharp might.

I have just stepped out of a coffee shop opposite St George’s Church in Beckenham where I have snatched a quick snack lunch before heading home. The road outside is busy but my attention is immediately caught by the sound of excited happiness on the other side. It is Lauren Moore, 18, obliviously talking to someone on her mobile phone as she strides along. Her lit-up face is animated and what she is saying is punctuated with squeals of sheer, unadulterated delight. No one in that street at that moment could fail to notice her or smile at her glee.

I know who she is, and why she’s so happy, because half an hour earlier I was in on the discussion round the corner which led to Moore’s being chosen as the winner of The Stage’s £7,500 scholarship to do KSA’s Musical Theatre course next year. I have also seen the dance, singing and drama auditions for the scholarship earlier that morning — see today’s issue of The Stage for more on this.

I blogged a few weeks back about Lyndi Smith’s forthcoming useful (groundbreaking?) book Free Degrees (White Lion Press) which was published earlier this week. Now Smith has launched a website — Degrees for Free — to supplement it. More grist to the mill for impoverished students or for those who can’t ever see how to get started financially even once they’ve been offered a place.

It includes articles dealing with topics such as how to set up a mechanism to receive gifts to your ‘training fund’ online - often the preferred option since cheques are now obsolescent and cash tricky to send.

I also enjoyed 187 ways to save money as a student. Suggestions include buying second hand books rather new, walking or cycling rather than getting the bus and planning menus to share with your housemates to keep food costs down. None of these is particularly original, of course, but perhaps these are the common sense things which each new intake of drama and other students need to be reminded of. And anyone with a money saving tip can add it to the list which seems a good idea.

The website also offers tools and links and you can buy Free Degrees directly as well as reading selected extracts from it.

Lyndi Smith, about whom there is an article in the Music Theatre Supplement in this week’s issue of The Stage, is well worth listening to. She raised £26,000 and funded herself for two years’ training at RADA without incurring any debt at all - a remarkable achievement.

Although she concedes that there is a limit to the amount of money available to students via grants, bursaries and sponsorship, Smith believes that there are infinite sums to be raised by individual students entrepreneurially organising events - something drama and other performing arts students are particularly well placed to do.

Never accuse me of not covering the entire range of performing arts education and training — even the bits that had never occurred to you (or me).

According to that informative organ, the Liverpool Echo, Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) student and vocal coach Charlie Adams, 24, is leading a twelve week course to teach prostitutes to sing. All twelve class members are current or former sex workers.

The singing lessons, part of The Social Partnership’s Routes Out of Sex Work (ROOSW) project, have been so successful that participants have written and recorded a CD to be released next month. It includes songs about life on the streets, substance misuse and love and families.

Adams is in her final year of a community drama course at LIPA. She says (apparently without irony): “It was fantastic, but not without its problems. Because of their work, there are issues with commitment but there are some fantastic singers,” adding that the course was a gradual process from sing-a-long sessions to class members writing and singing their own material.

Actually this reminds me very much of some of excellent performing arts work being done in prisons and young offenders’ institutions by, for instance the London Shakespeare Workout. I am not, of course, suggesting that these women are breaking the law. But most of us (and probably most of them) must wish that they didn’t have to earn their living in this way. And, like prisoners and young offenders, many of these women are held back by very low self esteem.

Karen Smith, coordinator at Routes Out of Sex Work, which helps women who want to get conventional jobs, argues that singing builds confidence. “The process of learning to sing, writing songs and recording the CD has built the confidence of the women and given them a sense of achievement,” she says, lamenting society’s all too common refusal to take these women seriously.

Sadly, it’s the sort of thing which all too often makes ‘respectable’ people snigger and/or get into a tabloid tirade about money misspent and how these women corrupt a neighbourhood and deserve all they get. But participants in Charlie Adams’s course also get support, counselling and advice from ROOSW and anything which constructively helps to show prostitutes that there might, just might, be another way forward gets my vote every time.

Surely a project of this sort can’t be that expensive to run? So why could it not be replicated in other parts of the country? Every town, after all, has its own unofficial red light district. Or perhaps it is already happening. If you know of, have taught or participated in performing arts training for sex workers, then do let me know.

Drama School showcases continue to puzzle me. We all know they are not a bundle of fun. They are nerve racking for students to take part in, arguably a bore for the staff who have to organise and direct them and, as for the agents and casting directors who attend, well, it’s not that often they see or hear anything which sets their predatory teeth rattling.

Nonetheless, until a better method turns up, showcases remain the prime way of presenting new graduate talent to the industry to take its pick. So surely there is every need to manage showcases as well as they can possibly be managed, to be continuously on the lookout for ways of doing them better and to be making sure that standards are better than excellent? Drama schools, surely, owe that and more to their students who have worked their socks off for two or three years, paid fees and made real sacrifices?