Bill Drummond, the co-founder of 1980s pop group KLF, visited school in Port-au-Prince just before Christmas to lead the same music workshop he had done at The Kingswood School several weeks before.

Yesterday he returned again to the Corby school where he was a student in the 1960s to kickstart a fundraising effort following the reported collapse of L'Ecole Guillaume Manigat in this month's devastating earthquake.

To form a link, children at the poverty stricken school had their photograph taken with a picture of Kingswood pupils in November and, yesterday, Mr Drummond did the same thing with a photograph of youngsters from Haiti.

He said: "As yet we have not been able to learn any news of the school, the pupils or the members of staff – but we fear the worst. When we heard what had happened, we decided we wanted to do something for the school.

"During our visit to Port-au-Prince, the kids were very interested in the children from Corby.

"The girls wanted to know how the girls did their hair and the boys wanted to know whether the boys played football.

"It's a link that we are now going to carry on and develop. We want to help them rebuild their school."

Mr Drummond went to the country with his The17 choir, that does tours around the world and runs occasional music projects in different settings.

He said the team had to provide pupils with pencils and notebooks during their week-long visit.

Deputy arts director at The Kingswood School, Dave Robertson, said: "Our students have been shocked about the reality of life and death and the mortality issue.

"We will run the campaign for a few weeks and we are hoping to raise about £1,000.

"We are then going to hold the money until the infrastructure is ready and then we'll put it towards the effort to build a new school.

"One of the students has already brought in £50 and we only started the fundraising effort a few days ago."

Residents can join the campaign by handing in cash to the school's reception or donating online at www.the17.org.