Music Therapy Conversations

Pauline Etkin trained as a teacher at the Witwatersrand Teachers Training College in Johannesburg, Rep of South Africa. She became head of Music and early childhood didactics and was always interested in how music could help the many children that she came across who were struggling to fit in socially or educationally. Pauline has been a major influence in the development of music therapy both in the UK and internationally. She trained as a music therapist in 1982 and her first passion will always be as a music therapist having worked in this role for 25 years working for a year in South Africa with children with life-threatening illnesses and in Soweto with children and teachers there. In 1986 she returned to London and worked as a music therapist and tutor becoming Sybil’s Deputy Director in 1988.  Pauline took over from Sybil Beresford-Peirse as Director of the new Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre in North London in 1991, and then as Chief Executive Officer of Nordoff-Robbins from 2002 to 2013. When Ro