Guildhall School announces Making It Festival 2025

Making It Festival returns from 17 June – 4 July 2025: a three-week celebration of new, original work made by Guildhall School’s vibrant and multi-skilled student community.

Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Making It Festival asks what it means to “make it” as an artist in the 21st century. As traditions evolve and power shifts, artists with the skills to create their own work become the trailblazers of our culture.

This three-week celebration of new, original work made by Guildhall School’s vibrant and multi-skilled community of artists will feature an eclectic line up of performances, installations and talks. 

Highlights include:

• The return of GradEx – the annual exhibition of works by final-year artists on Guildhall School’s Production Arts and Digital Design & Production programmes 
   
• Making It Work – a series of bespoke conversations connected to the Festival’s events, bringing together panels of students, alumni and academics
   
• Self-led performance works for stage and screen by final-year actors – The Making of Us – created and performed entirely on their own terms 
   
• New works written by composers and librettists on Guildhall’s MA in Opera Making & Writing in this year’s Opera Makers 
   
• Showcases from artists on the School’s Electronic & Produced Music and Collaborative Performance Making programmes
   
• SMORGASBORD cabaret returns with special guest hosts Fag Packet, collaborating with students and staff from across Guildhall School to present new multi-disciplinary creations 

Most of the Festival events are free of charge, and tickets for other events start at just £5, making this an accessible way to celebrate the next generation of ground-breaking artists and experience inspiring new work this summer.

Gilly Roche, Making It Festival Director and Head of Interdisciplinary Practice at Guildhall School, says:

“Making It Festival celebrates the extraordinary authorial voices of our dynamic student community. These artists are the trailblazers - everything presented within Making It Festival is brand new, original, and created by them. 

Our multi-disciplinary programme is a kaleidoscopic reflection of the unique and invaluable perspectives of the next generation of artists. They’re Making It, on their own terms and in their own words. 

We can't wait to share it with you.”
 

Festival Line Up:

GradEx: Production Arts Graduate Exhibition 2025

Tuesday 17 – Friday 20 June, 7–9pm, Silk Street Theatre 

An exhibition of the outstanding work of final-year students on Guildhall School’s Production Arts and Digital Design & Production programmes, GradEx demonstrates the creative power and skill of artists preparing to join the creative industry’s workforce.

This exhibition offers a chance to see up close a range of props, scenery, costumes, lighting, sound and video designs created for the School’s public operas, dramas, musicals and external projects, as well as portfolios and personal projects. 

The Making of Us: Final-Year Actors’ Self-Led Performances

Tuesday 24 – Friday 27 June, Silk Street Theatre

Guildhall’s dynamic final-year actors present a vibrant programme of brand-new performance works, created by the artists on their own terms. Each fifteen-minute work is performed alongside three or four other works in an exploration of differing perspectives and lived experiences. 

Works include:

• Fluid by Anastasia Adeleke
• Dissonance by Anthony Graham and Daniel Evergreen
• The Maths Lesson by Ella Moss
• A new work by Esteban Gonzalez Baez
• Shades of us by Evangelina Burton and Mariana Lewis
• Softly Spoken by Fia Hadeed and Tashani Bent
• A new work by Theo Burns
• How Old? by Jessica-Jayne Mannion
• A new work by Kirsty Bloom 
• Flow by Liberty Dearsley and Maya Sivagnanam
• Open Tents, Easy Planes by Louis Shelton 
• A new work by Luis Rio Aue
• Gossip with G.O.D by Moussa Samba 
• The Story of Timothy by Nathaniel Turay-Boxx 
• Wee Girl by Sophie McGibbon 
• A new work by Karl Markey-Lee
• Default by Yaren-Medine Kesen
• Veridical by Lenius Jung 

Tickets: £5

Opera Makers

Friday 27 June – Wednesday 2 July, 7pm, Milton Court Studio Theatre 

Performed by singers and repetiteurs from Guildhall's Opera Studies department, Opera Makers features new works written by composers and librettists on Guildhall’s MA in Opera Making & Writing in association with the Royal Ballet and Opera. 

Featuring this year are: 

• Alexander and the Tree by composer Sorena Sabah and librettist Jess McNulty
• Gef! by composer Sam Meredith and librettist Sophia Trewick
• Strings of Rebellion by composer Mary Offer and librettist Adi Denner.

Tickets: £15 (£8 concessions)
 

Collaborative Performance Making Showcase

Wednesday 2 July, Milton Court Theatre

Artists on the 2025 MA Collaborative Theatre & Performance making come together for two performances in Guildhall School’s Milton Court Theatre. The Masters programme aims to bring together early-career theatre practitioners to develop new theatre and performance work.

Admission free, no ticket required

Electronic & Produced Music Showcase

Wednesday 2 & Thursday 3 July, 6pm, Milton Court Concert Hall 

Two exciting showcases of new music by Postgraduate students from Guildhall School’s Electronic & Produced Music department. The Electronic & Produced Music department provides a range of specialist disciplines within which to study a wide array of electronic and produced music, from experimental Sonic Art to mainstream Film Scoring.

Admission free, no ticket required

SMORGASBORD: The Making It Cabaret 

Thursday 26 June, 8.30pm, Silk Street Theatre 

Following an unforgettable debut at the 2024 Making Festival, SMORGASBORD invites artists from across Guildhall School to serve new multi-disciplinary creations in collaboration with Fag Packet, an award-winning cabaret, theatre and drag double act. 

Since inception in 2022, Fag Packet have produced sell out shows through their weird and wonderful characters ‘2 indie boys from Reading’ and ‘DYKE Systems Ltd’. Placing third in Europe's largest Drag King Competition, Man Up, they have produced sell out cabarets in venues such as The Divine, Colours Hoxton, Komedia, Shoreditch Town Hall and Glastonbury Festival. As special guests at this year’s SMORGASBORD, Fag Packet promise queer mischief, drag nonsense and non-binary finery. 

Tickets: £5
 

Making It Work 

Wednesday 18 June – Thursday 3 July

In addition to the above events Guildhall School offers the chance to find out more about the artists behind Making It Festival with a free series of bespoke conversations. Bringing together panels of students, alumni and academics, the speakers will delve into the artistic development process for their projects, and discuss their transition from students in education to professional artists within the industry.

These conversations, which cover topics across Production Arts (18 June), Acting (25 June), Opera (30 June), Collaborative Performance Making (2 July) and Electronic & Produced Music (3 July). 

Making It Work talks are free, no ticket required for Production Arts, Collaborative Performance Making and Electronic & Produced Music. Talks connected to Opera Makers and The Making of Us are free for holders of tickets to the connected evenings’ events.
 

Explore the full line up at www.gsmd.ac.uk/whats-on/making-it-festival