Melbourne September 2026: three days of discipline, courage and taking stuttering into the real world

Melbourne gave us exactly what we wanted in September: busy streets, plenty of people to talk to, a very public stage in Federation Square — and five new McGuire Programme members ready to stop letting stuttering make decisions for them.

From 10–12 September 2026, the McGuire Programme Australia, New Zealand & South East Asia region returned to Melbourne for another intensive course.

This time we tried something different:

We started on Thursday.

No Wednesday evening warm-up. No extra runway.

Thursday morning meant it was time to get to work.

And it worked.

Five new students. Six coaches. Plenty of attention.

One of the biggest strengths of this course was simple:

We had more coaches than new students.

With five new students and six coaches, there was plenty of opportunity for individual feedback, demonstrations, correction and encouragement.

Every coach on a McGuire Programme course is also someone who stutters, so the advice does not come from theory alone — it comes from people who have had to use these techniques in job interviews, on the phone, in meetings, ordering food and speaking to strangers themselves.

That strong coach-to-student ratio helped set the tone for the whole course.

Discipline was excellent, the new students were coachable, and the group worked hard from the beginning.

Thursday: rebuild the foundations

The first challenge of an intensive McGuire course is learning that changing the way you speak takes more than simply trying to “slow down” or hoping the words come out.

Thursday was about the physical foundation: costal breathing, technique, control and discipline.

It can feel strange.

It is meant to.

The goal is to stop relying on the same old tricks, avoidance behaviours and habits that have been built up over years of stuttering.

The new Thursday-start format kept the day focused and gave everyone a clear job:

Learn the tools. Exaggerate them. Accept coaching. Keep going.

Friday: stop hiding from the stutter

Technique is only half the fight.

For many people who stutter, the bigger battle is what happens before they even speak: changing a word, avoiding a name, pretending you forgot what you wanted to say, choosing not to make the phone call, or staying quiet because speaking feels too risky.

Friday moved into the psychological side of the programme — challenging those fears and beginning to use the new skills outside the safety of the course room.

This is where a McGuire course becomes very real.

The aim is not to become good at speaking inside a hotel conference room.

The aim is to take control when speaking to actual people, in actual situations, when there is no script and no easy escape.

Saturday: Melbourne became the training room

Then came Saturday.

Public speaking. Contacts. Federation Square. No hiding.

The group headed into the centre of Melbourne and delivered public speeches in Federation Square, surrounded by locals, visitors and the normal movement of one of Melbourne’s busiest public spaces.

The speeches were a major highlight of the course and went extremely well.

For someone who has spent years trying not to be noticed when they speak, deliberately standing up in Federation Square and addressing strangers is about as far outside the comfort zone as you can get.

That is the point.

Then came the contacts.

A “contact” in the McGuire Programme is a deliberate conversation with another person — an opportunity to practise speech technique, challenge avoidance and prove that the fear of speaking is often far bigger than the reality of the conversation itself.

And this group did a lot of them.

Everyone completed more than 100 contacts.

Across the 21 people participating in the course, that means:

More than 2,100 real-world conversations.

More than 2,100 occasions where somebody deliberately chose to speak.

More than 2,100 opportunities to practise technique instead of avoiding a situation.

By the end of the course, Melbourne had become one enormous speech practice room.

Why 2,100+ conversations matter

The number is impressive, but the real value is what happens as those conversations accumulate.

The first contact can feel enormous.

Then you do another.

And another.

By the twentieth, you already have evidence that you can do it.

By the fiftieth, the fear starts losing some of its authority.

Keep going past one hundred and the focus begins to move away from:

“What if I stutter?”

and toward:

“How well am I communicating?”

Multiply that across an entire course group and you get more than 2,100 individual moments where someone chose to speak rather than avoid.

That shift is important.

The McGuire Programme is not about pretending stuttering never existed.

It is about learning physical and psychological tools, then putting in enough disciplined real-world practice that stuttering no longer gets to control every speaking decision.

A new three-day format worth keeping

We deliberately changed the course structure this time by starting on Thursday, and the result was very positive.

The three-day format remained intensive.

Discipline stayed strong.

The students still had time to learn the physical techniques, work hard on the psychological side, complete public-speaking challenges and undertake a huge amount of real-world speaking practice.

So this was more than another successful Melbourne course.

It was also a useful test of how we can keep improving the way we run courses in the ANZ region.

We will keep what works, change what needs changing, and continue demanding the one thing that cannot be replaced by any technique or timetable:

Effort.

The course finishes. The work does not.

The five new members left Melbourne with a new set of tools, but completing an intensive course is the beginning rather than the finish line.

McGuire Programme membership is built around continued coaching, support and returning to future courses to keep improving.

Our returning graduates and coaches are a major part of that system — people come back not only to work on their own speech, but to help the next new student through the same challenges they once faced themselves.

To our five newest members:

Welcome to the programme.

To the coaches and returning graduates who gave their time and energy throughout the course:

Thank you.

And to the people of Melbourne who unknowingly became part of more than 2,100 speech challenges:

Thanks for the conversations.

We will be back.

Denis Wright
Regional Director
McGuire Programme Australia, New Zealand & South East Asia