Hilary is an active community musician, and what motivates her is making inclusive and accessible opportunities for people to pursue their creative talents.
Hilary has had two careers. As a musician, performer and teacher, but also in public sector field management for the Employment Department under its various incarnations. She worked as both an Adult Training Manager for what became the Training and Enterprise Council, and as Programme and Contract Manager for programmes for unemployed people for the Employment Service. Here she used her creativity to help develop new programmes to reach more people.
She travelled to Budapest for the Department of Employment to advise on special needs provision in the 1990s as the new post-Soviet economies developed.
Hilary is a classical singer having trained in her teens with her teacher from the Royal Opera House and as an adult with John Dethick, formerly Principal Baritone of the English National Opera. A music degree from the University of Sheffield was followed with an MA in Community Music from the University of York.
Hilary still performs and has many years’ experience working in schools. She worked for both Kirklees and Sheffield Music Services as a peripatetic vocal teacher and was the vocal teacher for 16 years until retirement for the Sheffield Music Academy - a government-funded Centre for Advanced Training. She is currently Musical Director for Stannington Mixed Choir and curator of the Valley Music Festival.