About the BBC Performing Arts Fund

The BBC Performing Arts Fund helps aspiring music-makers and performers looking for a way to get ahead.

The BBC Performing Arts Fund is a registered charity, number 1101276. The charity (formerly Fame Academy Bursary Trust) was set up in 2003 within the BBC.

The Fund receives revenue from the voting lines of BBC One entertainment programmes that seek to find new performing talent (including Fame Academy, How Do you Solve a Problem Like Maria? and I’d Do Anything).

To date the fund has allocated £2.4m to fund young musicians, from a range of genres, to help them pursue their careers in music.

Our mission is to seek out and support excellent aspiring performers and those directly supporting performing artists, who for reasons of lack of existing opportunity, personal background or circumstance, would not have been able to achieve their most ambitious goals, or their talent’s greatest potential without the Fund’s support or intervention.