How did that happen? I have now been self employed for fifty years and for those of you who don’t know, this is how I did it. After leaving drama school in 1971 I got married and settled into life in Leicestershire. My husband was travelling for work as a musician, so I put an advert in the local paper for youngsters needing acting and confidence building. I rented rooms at my local church and within a couple of years I had 100 students doing classes on a Saturday or private lessons after school. I entered them for exams and local competitive festivals and took exams myself to build my skills ..read more

On 2 February I did something unusual…….I drove up the M1 to Sheffield to deliver a Voice Protection & Projection workshop for Sheffield City Council.  It was unusual as I had not taken a live workshop since 2019! It was lovely to work with 24 swimming teachers and help them understand how to power their voices safely when they are working.  It is so sad that many swimming coaches end up with damaged vocal cords later in life. The following week I was working with 7 members of staff at a midlands branch of a large company on my Dynamic Speaking course.  We spent a day learni ..read more

Normally I spend the month before Christmas in Hong Kong, where I am one of the adjudicators at the Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival.  Obviously at the end of 020 this was not possible.  Instead, the organising committee decided to run the festival remotely and from the middle of December I have been judging classes of verse speaking, prose reading and acting from the comfort of my home studio.   By the time the festival ends on 20 January 2021 I will have adjudicated more than 50 classes and written around 2,000 assessments. It’s amazing what modern technology will allow you ..read more

I recently read an article by neuroscientist, Dr Dean Barnett (author of The Happy Brain) which explored how masks affect human interaction. We all know how important facial expression is when we communicate. Until recently we would generally have associated wearing masks with suspicion or situations which might suggest risk or danger. TV portrayals of violent criminals often show them masked and medical professionals, who we would already associate with masks, might be doing things to us that we don’t like! So Dr Burnett suggests that part of our brain is now constantly focused on people wear ..read more

  If you regularly deliver training courses, the last five months will have brought a massive change. You are no longer in the same room as your audience where everyone can interact and move around. I thought I’d share with you my recent experiences and give you some tips on how to make online training successful. Since the late 1990’s I have been delivering a half-day CPD course on Voice Protection and Projection for swimming teachers throughout the UK. In July I was approached by two separate professional organisations to deliver a one-hour session on voice to prepare teachers for ..read more

  You may not be aware of the fact that the voice can be badly affected by this nasty virus. The voice box is positioned at the top of the airway, (trachea), after all. So, just in case you get a dose, here are some things you can do to help yourself: A Sore Throat? Throat sweets might make you feel more comfortable but they don’t actually do anything to get rid of the germs. You will do yourself more good by gargling with 3 drops of Tea Tree essential oil in a medicine cup of warm water. Gargle for about 2 minutes every 2 hours. To keep the throat moist, drink comfortably hot water with ..read more

  This month was a sad one for me as a man who had a huge influence on my life passed away. When I moved to Leicestershire as a young teenager I was already a bit of a performer.  I had appeared in shows at primary and high school before becoming a pupil at the grammar school. There, a young English and Drama teacher called Anthony (Tony) Howkins, began to enthuse his students with his passion for literature and theatre. He was a performer himself and we acted out the text we were studying for O-levels with enthusiasm. Our Shakespeare was ‘Macbeth’ and I vividly remember spending a l ..read more

R.I.P. Conversation? Last week I was minding my own business on a machine in the gym when four young men came in. They decided to have a little competition lifting the various weights but although two of them engaged in a bit of chat, the other two only managed a little of the lifting before stepping out while they read and replied to messages on their phones. They then moved on to the running machines across the room, exactly opposite to me. They decided on the time they were going to run, (presumably in competition with each other). Then three of them placed their phones in front of them and ..read more

How to win the TV interview battle With the Brexit debate reaching a climax, we are witnessing an increasingly hostile series of interviews with the front runners for the Prime Minister’s job.  Most politicians have some training and preparation before they are seen on screen but if your business comes to the attention of local or even national TV would you know how to come across in a positive way? The first thing you need to think about is how do I look? Obviously, what  you wear is your choice. Just make sure you represent your business/trade/profession in a positive way. You ..read more

How old do you sound ? I have an interesting question for you in this blog. There are individual physical attributes that alter the voice and ageing also affects the way we sound.  So how accurately can listeners estimate how old a talker is without any visual clues?  Not very well, actually: for much of adult life, the voice only changes slightly.  People look for a variety of clues to guess someone’s age.  Perhaps a slower speaking rate is the most useful.  A listener may assume that a lower-pitched voice signals an older voice, despite the fact that a man’s pitch te ..read more