Taking up a position at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire he worked alongside Professor Andrew Downes as deputy head of the School of Composition and Creative Studies, teaching ethnomusicology, composition, the gamelan, and launching, in consultation with the Anglo-Indian composer John Mayer, a 4-year degree programme in North Indian classical music, , including an exchange year with the University of Mumbai. During his tenure in Birmingham, he did field work in Indonesia with an emphasis on the sacred iron gamelan of Bali.
Moving to the south of France was an opportunity to begin a new direction in local music-making, collaborating with dancers, poets, and visual artists. He commissioned a gamelan from a maker in Java for educational projects and worked for several years as a music therapist with patients at the Limoux psychiatric hospital, also at a "lieu de vie" for children and adolescents suffering from trauma and developmental disabilities. From 2013 to 2020 he taught piano, composition, and world music at the Conservatoire of Carcassonne, and was a visiting teacher at the conservatoires of Toulouse and Perpignan. Now settled in the Loire region he devotes more time to composing, and plays with the experimental gamelan group, Ensemble Nist Nah, and others (see projects page).
"Halfway through there's a Robert Wyatt moment...it's the left hand of the piano doubling up a bass guitar line that recalls the English master of melancholy. In fact, the moderately bouncy African jive of this piece "Earthbow" is as cheerful as Lockett gets, and he also shares with Wyatt the knack of conjuring up a particularly English moody atmosphere, like a tango that's run out of petrol somewhere near Stockton-on-Tees..."
The Wire