Guildhall School of Music & Drama awarded half a million pounds to transform its Electronic Music studio

Guildhall School of Music & Drama has successfully secured nearly £500,000 to fund the transformation of its studio and teaching spaces for the School’s Electronic & Produced Music (EPM) department. The generous financial support from the Wolfson, Foyle and Garfield Weston Foundations, and The Guildhall School Trust, will enable Guildhall School to provide state-of-the-art studio facilities for over 200 students across its growing EPM programmes and elective modules, including Film Music, Game Audio, Songwriting and Live Electronics. 

Work will begin this summer to transform 120 sqm of the School’s Silk Street building into acoustically isolated and controlled spaces for specialist teaching and practice. This will include acoustic refurbishment of existing spaces and the purchase and installation of equipment for the new studios. From September, Guildhall welcomes an expanded cohort of EPM students, all of whom will benefit from the newly enhanced facilities. The School is currently the only major educational institution for EPM training in the conservatoire sector, and this project will further establish it as a global market leader in this field. 

The awards received by Guildhall School to support the project include £200,000 from the Wolfson Foundation, £100,000 from the Foyle Foundation and £50,000 from the Garfield Weston Foundation. The Guildhall School Trust has also awarded £137,500 to the project, while Guildhall School has committed to investing £125,000 in essential new hardware and software. The School is continuing to raise funds to ensure the completion of the project, and hopes to announce further financial support in due course. 

Armin Zanner, Vice-Principal & Director of Music, Guildhall School, said: "This is a major investment in Guildhall School’s infrastructure. It’s also an investment in our vision for the future of conservatoire music training – bringing new forms of performing arts presentation for a digital age together with the traditions of performance and composition for which we have long been renowned. We are deeply grateful for the financial support of all four foundations and trusts, enabling our Electronic & Produced Music students to take their rightful place in high-spec working spaces at the heart of our community.” 

Professor Mike Roberts, Head of Electronic & Produced Music, Guildhall School, said: "I'm extremely grateful for this generous support, which will bring so many benefits to our diversifying student body. The value of state-of-the art mixing and editing spaces, tailored to the specific needs and expectations of our high-tech artistic pathways, cannot be overstated. This development represents a significant milestone in the School's ability to provide the highest level of training for our students by placing the necessary 'instruments' of our practice within their reach. The new studios will greatly increase the amount of time our students can spend refining their artistic output in an environment that meets and exceeds the expectations of the industry into which they can emerge as pioneering artists." 

Find out more about studying Electronic & Produced Music at Guildhall School.