Turning her dream into reality: Sahana Gero's World Heart Beat

Tucked away in London’s newly affluent Nine Elms, with the American Embassy at the end of the street, is something you might not expect to find in this neighbourhood of luxury apartments and ‘curated’ (as the signs say) water-gardens. At first glance it could be a café. The sign over the door says ‘World Heart Beat’, which doesn’t explain much, but more helpfully, the wording adds ‘Music Academy and Concert Venue’. And so it is – though if you ask its founder and artistic director Sahana Gero the venue hosts a long list of others things besides; from recording studio to community space, youth club and career-counselling centre.

It breaks moulds. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything else quite like World Heart Beat: a name that Gero says ‘came to me in a dream where I imagined my heart beating in time to everyone else on earth’. And if its whiff of New Age alternativism suggests staring into space and joss-sticks, the reality is reassuringly practical.

‘A lot of music organisations’, says Gero (pictured left), ‘are either performance-based with educational work on the side or educational with performance on the side. We’re both in equal measure. And we reach a broad range of people. Turn right out of this building and you’re in a rich area. But turn left and you’re in social housing estates that rank among the poorest 20 per cent in Britain’.

It was to the left that the World Heartbeat enterprise began 12 years ago. Gero was a clarinettist, performing internationally but also teaching, involved with Wandsworth’s music services, and developing a sense of what was needed locally, though not provided by the borough.

‘The system was focused on what happened in schools, but I was more interested in creating a musical community – and one that provided a home for youngsters who maybe weren’t doing so well at school’.

Armed with £3,500 from a Merrill Lynch award scheme for local projects, she turned a derelict warehouse into a centre for music lessons and related activities, more drop-in club than formal school. ‘I got the owners to give us the place rent-free in return for putting in radiators, because there was no heating – that’s where the £3,500 went.’

Basic as things were, they took off. Programmes multiplied, teachers were hired, students poured in and benefactors took an interest. Before long Gero’s vision couldn’t be contained by a warehouse.

New developments springing up around the relocated American Embassy were changing the face of Nine Elms, but with planning permissions conditional on feeding something back into the community: so-called Section 106 agreements. Gero discovered that one such agreement earmarked a vacant unit for ‘cultural’ purposes.

Proposals were invited and 42 organisations applied. Although, as Gero says, ‘the developers would have preferred an art gallery that made no noise and wouldn’t disturb the surrounding apartments’, her idea for a multi-function music centre won – which meant she had a bare space as a gift, but now had to fit it out.

With £3.6 million raised from charitable foundations plus a capital grant from Arts Council England (Gero is nothing if not persuasive), she and her businessman brother James Gero created a compact auditorium-cum-recording studio with flexible seating for an audience of up to 120. Around it they built a suite of teaching, practice and tech rooms, with a cafe that doubles as a foyer. And the whole thing, in Ponton Rd SW11, opened for business in 2023 – looking not remotely like a school but, with soft-furnishings and a designer feel, more like the ‘home’ she wanted to achieve.

‘We cater for all ages here, from infants to early 20s. Some pay fees, but over half are on bursaries and 60 per cent are from the global majority. They come to us in different ways; some walk in from the street, some are referred by schools. And for many of them – we’ve got 400 on the books right now – it really does become a home from home, because they’re here for maybe 20hrs a week: taking courses, practising, or more broadly being absorbed into a musical community that gives them friends and confidence. We aim to catch students who might not flourish in other environments, and there’s a lot of mentoring to support them in ways that look beyond music toward leadership, communication, teamwork’.

Right now, there are eighteen different programmes running: half of them traditionally classical – piano, violin, clarinet, cello – but many extending to jazz, Asian music, song-writing, Celtic fiddle, and American big band. Around 50 freelance teachers are involved, some with serious performing careers like violinist Harriet Mackenzie and pianist-composer Michael Csanyi-Wills. And there are nods to the old Victorian idea of transfer of training, in that older students sometimes teach the younger ones – a notable example being a 24yr-old Venezuelan pianist Arnaldo Cogorno, who first arrived as a student of Csanyi-Wills, did well, got a scholarship to Trinity Laban, and now returns to World Heart Beat on Saturdays where he gives lessons to 14 children dawn to dusk.

At the same time, as he says, ‘I get supported with career advice. I can use the facilities here to make livestreams and recordings, and I have a recital in the auditorium scheduled for next January. So my relationship with this place continues in different ways’.

Meanwhile, the concert programme for the auditorium is growing, as are hirings out for musical events – generating an income critical to keeping things afloat. World Heart Beat costs £1.5 million a year to run and 5 per cent of that comes from Arts Council England. There are generous donors, but the bulk of the money has to come from hirings and the café. As Gero says, ‘every cup of coffee we sell helps a child learn an instrument’.

Happily, she has a knack of making useful contacts. The chair of her trustees is Rachel van Walsum whose long experience in music management comes with a good address book. Luminaries like Yevgeny Sudbin, Julian Joseph and Harry Christophers are keen supporters. And in the year or so since the new building opened, word has spread about the auditorium’s quality as a recording space – equipped with state-of-the-art tech, a d&B Soundscape system, and a shiny Steinway Model D, acquired from the Royal Albert Hall. In recent months the BBC Singers and The Sixteen have both used the space, and liked it.

Where things go from here depends on deepening relationships. Approaches to the American Embassy at the end of the street have met with a cautious if hopeful response: the Cultural Attache came for a look just before Easter, though apparently got lost on the way. And Gero’s life revolves around ‘building a philanthropic base to make this venture sustainable. There’s a unique energy about World Heart Beat that people pick up on. And as Wandsworth is next year’s London Borough of Culture, there are opportunities to explore. We’ll get there’.

Upcoming events at World Heart Beat include the world premiere of a unique new deep listening art installation Origin, and a fundraising concert for young musicians in Palestine given by the MiraLamar Duo in support of PalMusic UK.