Matt Peacock is founder of Streetwise Opera, a charity that uses music as a tool to help homeless people move forward in their lives. In less than 10 years, Streetwise Opera has become one of the most respected charities using the arts to transform the lives of vulnerable people.

The charity runs a music programme in 11 homeless centres in the UK every week and its opera productions have all won four and five star reviews in the national press. Winner of the Andy Ludlow Homeless Award 2008; a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award 2008; The Times/Gramophone Music in the Community Award in 2009 Streetwise Opera was highlighted in the government’s homelessness strategy as an example of best practice.

Streetwise Opera’s work is now being rolled out across the world – their current production My Secret Heart has been seen by over 150,000 people from the Biennale of Sydney to New York and Beijing and they have worked with homeless and vulnerable people in North America, Japan and Australia through British Council initiatives.

Matt is a former Key Worker at The Passage nightshelter in London and was an opera critic for Opera Now magazine; in 2004 he was a fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme and in 2010 was awarded a Breakthrough Fund by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation which invests in the most exciting arts entrepreneurs. Matt is a Guest Lecturer at Edinburgh University and has spoken at conferences and events in Tokyo, Melbourne, Paris and Belgrade.

Matt sits on the Homelessness Foundation, a government homelessness advisory panel, has been a trustee of Shelter UK and was featured in the Independent newspaper’s ‘Happy List 2008’. Matt is one of 30 social entrepreneurs profiled in Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s book, Britain’s Everyday Heroes.