Hilary Friend obituary

My colleague Hilary Friend, who has died aged 82, had a fiercely intelligent mind. She combined a career in adult education with an active interest in music, and was a skilled pianist, recorder player and sang in several choirs. From 1999 to 2012, she led the Women’s Revolutions Per Minute (WRPM) project, a non-profit company involved in the research, marketing and sales of music by women in many genres, especially world music and political songs. Following a classics and philosophy degree at Oxford (1966), and a PGCE at King’s College London, she taught languages, philosophy and literature in schools and colleges, while living in Brixton, south London. For 20 years from 1974 she worked as a tutor and manager in adult education in inner city London, Bedford and Manchester, focusing on equal opportunities and second-chance education. We met while she was head, in 1985-88, of the North Hulme centre, part of Manchester city council’s community education service. This coincided with major urban redevelopment programmesin the city, which posed challenges for a team of educators eager to engage with the community. This proved an opportunity for Hilary to pursue her fight for inclusive fo