Toby the Tenor

Hello everyone and many congratulations for completing your studies at Guildhall School.

It is my great privilege to stand here and share some reflections on the UK’s creative landscape in 2024 and what you, as graduates of Guildhall, will be able to contribute to it.

Aside from developing your technical skills specific to your chosen discipline, be it an instrument, dramatic, academic or technical training, you will have benefited from the what I call the institutional DNA of Guildhall. In my view, every institution has a specific character that it hands to its constituents. All the people who have been part of that institution through time, the location, the architecture, fashions and zeitgeists alchemise to form its DNA.

The DNA of this school is infused with creative energy, with collaboration and with colleagiality like no other. In the gathering space of the central atrium you will have brushed elbows with the future of both British theatre and British music. I remember, when I was a student here, watching an excited young Daniel Craig run down the full length of the atrium to throw himself into the arms of the young Ewan MacGregor. I have no idea what they were celebrating in that moment but all of us together were the next generation in the Great British tradition of artistic endeavour, as you are now.

The energy, the chats, the shared confidences, the gossip and the caffeine of which you have partaken in that (let’s face it) brutal, modernist thoroughfare is the lifeblood of this school and I hope it will inspire you, as it has me, for your whole careers.

Since leaving last summer you will have been discovering what it is to be pursuing work in your chosen careers and, by now, you will be aware that the opportunities to perform and follow your dream are not as forthcoming as they were when you started your studies.

There is less work than there used to be and the compensation for that work has not kept pace with inflation.

I want to say to you that you have agency over the future of our global cultural offering. You are now the ones who have to reach out to new audiences and convince them of what we can contribute to make their lives richer and more meaningful. It is not for you to fit into the status quo of that offering but to redefine it, improve it and to help it grow.

I believe you, as graduates of Guildhall and therefore recipients of its creative DNA, are well positioned to achieve such a redefinition because of three life skills you have learnt here that your contemporaries in other colleges and universities will not have learnt. You may not be aware what those exceptional gifts are, so I will list them for you now.

1. Sociability – the conversations I have had with some of you eclipse conversations I have had with your contemporaries elsewhere. Guildhall seems to have nurtured general interest and I encourage you to maintain that interest, to look outside your immediate circles and to be interested in the world beyond.

2. Collegiality – I have witnessed the support you give to each other, working together with mutual respect and encouragement.

3. Confidence – I visited two of the country’s top universities last week and spoke with undergraduates and post grads. To a person, they lacked the confidence of the students I have met at Guildhall.

To be able to follow your ambition, many of you will have to supplement your daily life with extra work in the first years of your career – you may consider teaching, office temp work, service in a restaurant or work in the retail sector. Believe in yourselves when you consider what it is you can offer. Your social skills will enable you to stand out and reach for something that will be more than simply a means to make ends meet. It could be work in theatre administration or a library, it could be work in the care sector. Whatever it is, believe that the extra work can be an opportunity to grow as a person and more than a means to an end.

I encourage you to be more than performers. Have something to relate; have stories to tell; stand for something and have convictions. After all, it is our aim to speak to audiences, not simply to entertain them but to change them for the better.

I want to end with a quote from John F. Kennedy’s address to the students of Amherst College, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts. He delivered his speech on the 26th October, 1963, four weeks before he was shot in Dallas, Texas.

Here it is:

“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as (Robert) Frost said, a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

Once again, congratulations to you all. Go forward into the world with confidence and make it a better place.