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Return to Performance: Looking after your voice – a guide to vocal health

3:00pm – 5:00pm, Wednesday 29th Sep 2021

BAPAM’s Return to Performance Series: Looking After Your Voice: A Guide to Vocal Health

BAPAM’s purpose is to improve health in the performing arts and support enhanced performance excellence through wellbeing and good practice.

BAPAM deliver expert health and wellbeing services in the performing arts. Our events give artists, creators, technicians, teachers, and organisers the knowledge they need to improve health and enjoy sustainable careers.

As the largest provider of career-specific healthcare to performers in the UK, we are uniquely positioned to bring together expert clinicians, educators, researchers, artists and creators to deliver innovative training to empower the arts community to improve and maintain health throughout our creative work and learning spaces.

This introductory 2-hour session is designed for performing arts professionals and students and outlines risk factors and key strategies to maintain good vocal health throughout a sustainable career.

The session focuses on evidence-based practical skills and draws from performance experience, research findings, psychology, and proven vocal health clinical pathways. Participants will learn how to avoid vocal problems and identify the signs and symptoms if they do occur, how to manage issues, promote good health, and where to go for help.

Tutor: Clarissa Hardaker

Clarissa Hardaker is a London-based Speech Therapist, Voice and Accent Coach, highly specialised in voice and vocal rehabilitation with actors, singers and professional voice users.

She offers skilled assessment and treatment for people with speech, language, communication and swallowing disorders. This includes but is not limited to adults with speech and articulation disorders and voice disorders.

Her MFA in Voice Studies has given Clarissa the skills and qualifications of a voice coach and teacher and she specialises in helping elite voice users with breath, phonation, resonance, and articulation. Online or face-to-face sessions are available, tailored to your needs.

Clarissa is a singer and non-professional actor herself and has worked with over 100 clients in the performing arts and has conducted research into the importance of providing voice training for teachers as standard as part of initial teacher training.

Research looking at health issues within the performing arts workforce consistently finds that 70-75% of our population report both mental and physical health problems, which is much higher than the national average. We are lucky to be working with a number of health and wellbeing experts who can offer training to performers across the UK, with the aim of reducing the levels of poor health and supporting performers to have a sustainable career. Working with our partners in Equity, Musicians’ Union, Help Musicians UK and Performing Arts Education Providers – who are very kindly giving us free use of training venues – we are expanding our national training programme supporting healthy performance in the UK.