We continue our exploration of social practice programmes and projects at Guildhall School of Music and Drama from the 1970s-2020s.

In this episode we hear from three alumni of the Performance and Communication Skills course.

EPISODE 08 | AUGUST 28 | 2026

Jo Gibson | Sophie Hope

Sara Lee took the course in its first year, 1984, and recalls the formative placement she went on at Wormwood Scrubs prison, describing a defining moment when they played a piece of music written by one of the inmates.

Paul Griffiths and Tim Steiner joined the course in 1987. Paul had been at Community Music and participated in John Stevens' Search and Reflect workshops, and Tim had been studying music at the University of Sussex with Peter Wiegold, the artistic director of PCS.

The group reflect on their experiences of the course, with Tim and Peter discussing the disconnect between the experimental work they were doing at Guildhall and the work they were sent to do in schools and youth clubs, which they didn't find very inspiring. They recall how the PCS course was looked down on by other departments at Guildhall, and was unofficially referred to as "Piss, Crap and Shit."

They discuss the extent to which attitudes have changed, and how more needs to be done to raise the profile of the kind of work being done by musicians in society. They discuss how this is about artists making experimental work in different contexts, collaboratively with others, rather than facilitating other people’s music.

Sara Lee https://irenetaylortrust.com/what-we-do/meet-the-team/office-staff-and-project-team/

Tim Steiner http://www.timsteiner.co.uk/

Paul Griffiths https://www.sco.org.uk/profile/paul-griffiths/

John Stevens Search and Reflect workshops https://www.scribd.com/document/758658457/John-Stevens-search-Reflect-1

Community Music https://future.london/organisation/community-music/

Peter Weigold https://thethirdorchestra.org/peter-wiegold

School of Culture and Community Studies (now Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies), University of Sussex https://www.sussex.ac.uk/research/centres/centre-for-cultural-studies/

Music, Society, Education by Christpher Small (1977) https://muse.jhu.edu/book/1800

Loose Tubes Big Band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Tubes

Mark Withers https://www.markwithers.net/bio

Sean Gregory https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/staff/prof-sean-gregory

Lincoln Abbotts https://seamusicacademy.online/profile/lincoln-abbotts/

The Messengers https://metamorphonics.co.uk/meet-the-messengers/

ImPossibilities https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/whats-on/guildhall-jazz-festival-impossibilities

Portuguese Cultural Action group Ondamerala https://ondamarela.pt/en/ondamarela-2/

Listen to the Leadership episode https://www.miaaw.net/e/leadership/

Listen to the Peter Renshaw episodes: Part 1 and Part 2

Join the De-Centre mailing list