Singing for Health Practitioner: An Evidence-Based Perspective with Professor Stephen Clift

Welcome to Voice Study Centre’s Voice Professional Certificate programme. We will be offering a series of micro-credentials to develop learning, teaching and boost your CV. This is one of them!

Tutor: Professor Stephen Clift

Stephen Clift is Professor Emeritus, Canterbury Christ Church University, a Professorial Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), and a former Director of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health.

With over 40 years’ experience in the fields of health promotion and public health, he has made valuable contributions to research, practice and training on topics such as HIV/AIDS prevention, sex education, international travel and health, and the health promoting school in Europe.

Since the turn of the millennium, Stephen has pursued research in arts and health, and his most cited works centre around the potential value of group singing for health and wellbeing. Stephen has featured in a variety of academic journals: he was a founding editor of the journal Arts & Health: An international journal for research, policy and practice; is a joint editor of the Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health and Wellbeing; and as recently as 2022 co-edited a Health Promotion International journal article titled A chorus of voices: social singing and health promotion, which champions the notion that social singing together can be a powerful unifier in the face of uncertainty and isolation.

Each themed session of this five-week course will focus on two key recent studies on singing for health, and participants will have the opportunity to examine the extent to which they provide convincing evidence of the benefits of regular group singing for health and wellbeing.

Why take this course?

Since singing is so good a thing,
I wish all men would learn to sing.
William Byrd, Sonnets and Songs of Sadness and Piety (London, 1588)

2023 is the 400^th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, the great English composer who penned this couplet. At the end of the 16^th century, Byrd was very aware of the multiple health benefits of singing, but scientific research exploring these benefits only began at the end of the 20^th century.

According to Byrd, singing promoted health and wellbeing, strengthened the muscles of the chest, promoted deeper breathing and improved the quality of the voice. Therefore it is timely, given this anniversary, to explore the extent to which current scientific research supports his views. Byrd’s eight reasons to sing are featured below and underpin the topics and themes of each session of this course:

1. First, it is a knowledge easily taught, and quickly learned, where there is a good master, and an apt scholar
2. The exercise of singing is delightful to Nature, and good to preserve the health of Man
3. It doth strengthen all parts of the breast, and doth open the pipes
4. It is a singularly good remedy for stuttering and stammering in the speech
5. It is the best means to procure a perfect pronunciation, and to make a good Orator
6. It is the only way to know where Nature has bestowed the benefit of a good voice: which gift is so rare, as there is not one among a thousand that hath it: and, in many that excellent gift is lost, because they want Art to express Nature
7. There is not any Music of Instruments whatsoever, comparable to that which is made of the voices of Men, where the voices are good, and the same well sorted and ordered
8. The better the voice is, the meeter it is to honour and serve God therewith: and the voice of man is chiefly to be employed to that end

The assessment for this course will be based on key research papers featured in the individual sessions and will consist of a question-and-answer exam testing knowledge of the papers.