Making It Festival 2025
Making It Festival returns for 2025: a celebration of new, original work made by Guildhall School’s vibrant and multi-skilled student community, featuring an eclectic line up of performances, installations and talks.
Making It Festival, 17 Jun – 3 Jul 2025
What does it mean 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.
Join us for the 2025 Making It Festival : a celebration of new, original work made by Guildhall School’s vibrant and multi-skilled student community.
Festival events include:
- Opera Makers
- GradEx: Production Arts Graduate Exhibition 2025
- The Making of Us : Final-Year Actors’ Self-Led Performances
- Collaborative Performance Making Showcase
- Electronic & Produced Music Showcase
- SMORGASBORD: The Making It Cabaret
- Our Making It Work discussion series
The jam-packed Festival programme also includes special events, installations and pop-up performances across the campus.
Tickets start at just £5, and most events are free
Join us this summer to celebrate the next generation of ground-breaking artists.
Image above: artwork by Guildhall Production Arts student Farah Ishaq, presented as part of the 2024 Making It Festival
Making It Trailer
Making It Festival events
Tue 17 Jun
7–9pm
GradEx (Silk Street)
Wed 18 Jun
6.30pm
Festival Launch (Silk Street)
7pm
Making It Work: Production Arts (Silk Street)
Thu 19 Jun
7–9pm
GradEx (Silk Street)
Fri 20 Jun
7–9pm
GradEx (Silk Street)
Tue 24 Jun
10am–1pm
GradEx (Silk Street)
2.30pm, 4pm, 6.30pm
The Making of Us (Silk Street)
Wed 25 Jun
10am–1pm
GradEx (Silk Street)
2.30pm, 4pm, 6.30pm
The Making of Us (Silk Street)
Post 6.30pm show
Making It Work: Acting (Silk Street)
Thu 26 Jun
2.30pm, 4pm, 6.30pm
The Making of Us (Silk Street)
8.30pm
SMORGASBORD: The Making It Cabaret (Silk Street)
Fri 27 Jun
2.30pm, 4pm, 6.30pm
The Making of Us (Silk Street)
7pm
Opera Makers (Milton Court)
Post 7pm show
Making It Work: Opera (Milton Court)
Sat 28 Jun
7pm
Opera Makers (Milton Court)
Mon 30 Jun
11am – 7pm
Play!: Guildhall Research Department Summer PGR Symposium (Silk Street)
7pm
Opera Makers (Milton Court)
Tue 1 Jul
3–6pm
GradEx (Silk Street)
Wed 2 Jul
2pm & 6pm
Collaborative Performance Making Showcases (Milton Court)
Post 6pm show
Making It Work: Collaborative Performance Making (Milton Court)
6pm
Electronic & Produced Music Showcase (Milton Court)
7pm
Opera Makers (Milton Court)
Thu 3 Jul
6pm
Electronic & Produced Music Showcase (Milton Court)
Post 6pm show
Making It Work: Electronic & Produced Music (Milton Court)
Festival Hub, Silk Street Theatre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DT
Milton Court Concert Hall & Theatres, Milton Court, 1 Milton Street, London EC2Y 9BH
Find out more about how to get to Guildhall School on our Visiting Guildhall School webpage
Making It Festival ticketed concerts multi-buy offer:
Book 2 concerts for a 15% discount
Book 3 concerts for a 25% discount
Add multiple Making It Festival events to your basket at barbican.org.uk and the discount will automatically be applied.
Opera Makers
Final Year Actors’ Self-Led Performances
SMORGASBORD: The Making It Cabaret
No ticket is required for free Making It Festival events - just turn up!
Q&A with Gilly Roche, Director of Making It Festival
"Our invitation to the students sharing work at Making It Festival is: be bold, take a risk, share the work that feels closest and truest to you."
Gilly Roche, Guildhall’s Head of Interdisciplinary Practice and Director of Making It Festival, chats to us about championing the next generation of artists, what audiences can expect from this year's Festival, and why “making it” means more than just making it big.
Making It Festival events
Making It
Making It Festival is part of Making It – Guildhall’s new, year-round artist development programme Available from the first day of training until five years after graduation, it’s a rolling programme of opportunities dedicated to supporting artists to create, collaborate, innovate and build sustainable careers in an ever-changing creative landscape. To ‘make it’, whatever that means to them.
View Festival Guide
Download your Making It Festival Guide as a PDF