Charlotte Ritchie visits old school to sign first brick for Community Music Centre@jags

DULWICH, U.K. - May 15, 2013 - PRLog -- 23 year old Charlotte has risen to fame during her time as one of the four performers in the crossover classical group ‘All Angels’, Universal Records' answer to Il Divo, and more recently as a star of Channel 4's thrice Academy nominated ‘Fresh Meat’. She joins a list of celebrities backing the Community Music Centre project including Joanna Lumley, Sally Hawkins, Nicky Campbell & Tina Ritchie, Jenny Éclair, & Angela Gheorghiu.

The James Allen's Girls’ School in Dulwich is known for its social conscience and for giving back to the local community. The Community Music Centre@jags (affectionately known as the CMC@jags) will transform music for South East London.

The music space will be open to the whole community outside of school hours, and will comprise of a 400 seat concert hall, a 100 seat recital hall, 26 practice rooms, 3 music technology rooms, a listening room and music therapy room. The centre will be home to community choirs, orchestras, & musical groups of all styles. It will provide the highest standards of accessibility so those of all physical & mental abilities can access the centre. Local elderly people, who may be isolated in the community, will also be helped to come to the centre to hear live music being performed.

Charlotte says she feels honoured to support the centre:

“As a former JAGS pupil I’m 100% behind the Community Music Centre@jags. It’s going to offer students an incredible facility to rehearse & perform in, but also give as many people as possible outside of the school access to the kind of facilities that should be open to all.”

Charlotte has very positive memories of her involvement with music whilst at school:

“I was at JAGS from 2000-2007. We were the millennium year so our class was called 7M. My main memories of JAGS music was being a member of the gospel choir- a choir formed by the girls at school. They asked me to lead it in my final year but I wasn't great as I was doing All Angels at the time. But the girls were so brilliant and I genuinely loved it as we just sang whatever we liked. I also distinctly remember making up a song in year 8 music and one of our friends made us write it about a boy she 'loved' at the time. It was so emotional and so so funny looking back. But we loved that we could use all the instruments and recording facilities to create whatever we wanted”.

A star was indeed born at JAGS. Charlotte took part as an uncredited extra in Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire, and went on to play the lead character in a short film The Open Doors with Michael Sheen and Cherie Lunghi. She appeared in The Pierglass, at the Young Pleasance Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2006. She was a presenter on Boomerang, performed with All Angels in an episode of Emmerdale and played Emily Owen, a neighbour in the BBC's Life of Riley.

In 2011, Ritchie began starring as Oregon in the Channel 4 comedy series Fresh Meat. The university comedy has quickly established itself as a huge critical and commercial hit. Charlotte started filming for the show during her last 2 weeks at University, jumping from a great education into a limelight that she hopes others will also be able to experience through opportunities such as the CMC@jags…