Ep 26 Pauline Etkin

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
Robin Howat, Head of the Post-Graduate Training course moved to
Australia, Pauline undertook the additional role of Head of
Training from 1993 until 2003, developing it together with her
team into a two-year Master of Music Therapy Degree course in
1996 validated by City University.


Pauline became aware of the huge resources of the centre,
including its library and conference facilities and made sure
that the developing profession in the UK, in addition to
therapists working within the Nordoff-Robbins approach, could
benefit from such facilities. Conferences and meetings were held
regularly at the centre.


Pauline was also instrumental in linking with governmental
departments in helping to set-up the formal registration of music
therapists in the UK. She served on many national groups, for
many years chairing committees on supervision and training and
education. The BAMT awarded Pauline a ‘Lifetime Achievement
Award’ in 2013 and she was awarded an OBE ‘for services to music
therapy’ in the 2013 Queen’s New Year Honours. For more
information about Pauline’s extensive career in music therapy see
her autobiography in Volume 2 of John Mahoney’s compilation
(2017) and the two histories of the evolution of Nordoff-Robbins
by Fraser Simspon (2007, 2009).


In this interview Pauline talks about her own experiences of
training, with particular reference to Sybil Beresford-Peirse and
Clive Robbins. There’s also some discussion on what it might
mean, from her perspective, to be a music-centred music
therapist, and on the evolution of music therapy in the UK, with
tributes paid to the various pioneers identified by Pauline, who
have contributed so much to the profession.