Proud to announce the ‘little piano project’ - Ridley Academy - I started 7 years ago, teaching adults how to play piano, just got a Global Recognition Award!!!

40,000 students. 70 countries. It’s an amazing team working together as a real group that has made this happen.

I’m so proud of everybody involved.
I wanted to copy and paste what they wrote below.

Our independent judging panel has awarded you the Global Recognition Award for exceptional achievement.

The selection process is highly competitive. Of the 15,000 entrants each year, Ridley Academy has been recognized with the 2026 Global Recognition Award, and the honor reflects a body of work that has changed how tens of thousands of people around the world approach the piano. Its founder, Stephen Ridley, built a curriculum around emotional expression rather than dense theory, and that decision has produced measurable results across a genuinely global student base. The award falls under the Innovation category, since the academy's t...

Now and then, a story comes through that reminds me why this journey matters so much.

Not because of perfection.
Not because of speed.
But because of what it awakens in someone.

Recently, a student shared something that stayed with me.

She is 71 years old.

And after years of feeling disconnected from structured learning — after frustration with traditional methods, after time away from understanding how music really works — she made a decision:

She chose to begin again.

That decision is more powerful than most people realize.

Because many people don’t stop playing piano…
They stop believing they can learn it.

They sit at the piano.
They play what they remember.
They feel something.

But deep down, there’s a gap.

A gap between expression… and understanding.

And that gap is where frustration lives.

For this student, that gap existed for years.

She loved jazz.
She played music.
She even performed.

But she didn’t fully understand chords, progressions, or how everything connect...