Founders Story
Lorraine Liyanage
Founder and Head Teacher at SE22 Piano School – LRSM, CT ABRSM, ATCL, B.Sc (Hons)
The beginning
I trained and worked as a web and graphic designer in my 20s. My parents were not supportive of a career in music so this option was not something I explored beyond my school years. Having worked as a designer in a range of companies as varied as Harrods to Citibank, one day day I woke up and realised I was no longer excited to go into work and I decided to do something about it. Having always had a burning passion for performance, creativity, and music since childhood, I enrolled in a one-year Piano Teaching Certificate alongside my full-time graphic design job, and became determined to start making an exit plan!
I set up a private teaching practice from my home in East Dulwich when I moved here in 2006. Around this time, due to the lack of business acumen amongst some within the private teaching sector, very few piano teachers even had a web presence, so it was the ideal time to build the foundations of a piano teaching studio with a solid online presence and identifiable brand. The client segmentation, consumer behaviours, and demographics of the area are ideal for a business offering individual music tuition, due to the high number of families in the area and the interest in excellent, stimulating extra-curricular activities.
Living close to many primary schools enabled me to quickly facilitate successful business relationships, and build a large roster of students and due to my strong branding ethos, eventually it led to more enquiries than I could handle. The decision employ a part-time piano teacher enabled me to reduce my teaching hours from 7 days to 4 days, in order to dedicate my time to the administrative running of the business.
SE22 Piano School
After a short period of time, it became clear that my one bedroom flat was too small to accommodate the flow of students in and out of our home. I reached out to local contacts to find out what the options were for renting commercial premises, and after some shrewd negotiating, creative vision, and hard work, I secured a a lease on a former cafe just off Lordship Lane to convert into a piano teaching studio.
This enabled us to have two piano teachers offering lessons 6 days a week, although due to high demand and local word-of-mouth with regards to how high quality my business has become, we have nearly reached capacity in the last year, therefore we now also operate from a local music shop, South London Music. I continue to build the business and react to strong consumer demand by having one teacher working solely from her home in East Dulwich, and two teachers offering home visits to students in nearby postcodes. This method of portfolio diversification further demonstrates my dedication and commitment to my business, and passion for teaching and learning.
I currently offer part-time employment to five teachers all living in South London. The life of a musician can be fairly isolated with many hours spent alone at the piano. Working with a team of piano teachers gives me the opportunity to spend my time with fellow piano enthusiasts. Having been through the challenges of juggling a new business with a young family, it is also rewarding to be able to offer flexible working options to local parents on my teaching team.
One of my core team members has been with me for 7 years, and we have recently partnered on a completely new sideline venture, where we offer food and drink workshops based on our non-musical hobbies that include Fermented Foods and also Cocktail Bitters. Developing a new venture in tandem with a colleague has been a great team-building exercise and has also proven very popular with a totally new segmentation of customers, thus demonstrating my flare for strong marketing, graphic design, and business knowledge, no matter what the sector or area.
What Makes Us Unique
Explore the distinctive features that set SE22 Piano apart in the world of music education.