In this week’s blog, Adam Nasser Benmakhlouf and Marta Duran Arranz reflect on the SGSAH workshop, Speak and Be Heard. They talk about the practicalities of organising the workshop, the emotional experience of attending, and the importance of having a so-called Good Voice.

What Does a “Good” Voice Mean to You?

Do you picture a news reporter with a southern English accent? How about someone speaking a second or third language?

Why does it matter?

What judgements do we make about a person after hearing them say just a few words? What biases and social stereotypes are behind our judgements? Should someone be taken more or less seriously based on how they sound?

These questions were our starting point when we began to organise the workshop Speak and Be Heard. Held at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, this two-day workshop was supported by the SGSAH Cohort Development Fund for Innovative Doctoral Training 2023/24. At the heart of our project, we wanted to ask the question: How can voice work demonstrate the independence, craft, and flair of PhD students?

An Experimental Approach

Social inequities and biases are reproduced in academic circles (and wider circles) towards certain voice types and styles of speaking. This bias directly shapes the experiences of Doctoral students, the opportunities available to them and how easy it is for them to build a successful career.

In our workshop, we wanted to offer training for students like us to develop our voice with a greater sense of agency, deciding exactly how we would like to sound. We wanted it to be useful for students whose accent or speaking style doesn’t fit the normative standard, for those of us who don’t sound middle class, white, masculine or feminine enough neurotypical, able-bodied or from a specific part of the USA or England. This meant moving away from conventional voice coaching and judgements about what a “good” voice is like. Our own experiences of marginality helped shape our approach to planning every aspect of the event, from conducting meetings to designing the application forms and selection process.

This event would have not been possible without our workshop facilitator, Jean Sangster, Head of Voice in the School of Drama, Dance Production and Film SDDPF, and Head of the Centre for Voice in Performance (CViP) at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In our first conversation, Jean immediately understood our hopes for the training. Her enthusiasm and wealth of experience transformed our ambitious ideas into a real training event.

Hearing Our Own Voices

And suddenly, after many weeks of planning and preparing, April 25th arrived, and the event was happening! The participants joined together on the first evening, dining together and even spotting a dolphin jumping in the waves from the beach. Jean joined us all for breakfast the next morning to meet everyone informally before the workshop officially began. The time we spent together before the workshop began was tremendously meaningful towards building comfort and openness between us, softening the dynamic between Jean the facilitator and the wider group.

The workshop formally started with an introduction by Jean and physical stretching our bodies. Jean reminded us that issues of the voice are rarely only to do with the voice, and that we need to consider the whole physicality of sounding our voices, as well as the emotional associations of making ourselves heard.

After many hours and different exercises that explored the connection between our minds, breaths, and bodies, we took turns reading aloud some excerpts provided by Jean, putting what we had learned into practice. It was powerful and moving hearing the differences in our voices compared to just two days earlier. Our voices resonated with a previously unheard quality, the confidence we felt more at ease with.

The process had brought out feelings of high emotion as we explored the depths of our mind-body connection. With Jean’s support, every participant chose to work through their feelings and challenges as far as possible, with powerful results. As Marta finished their presentation, they were struck with the thought:

“This is my voice, I finally heard it”.

Reflective Conversations

The last part of the workshop was a simple conversation. Jean had made it clear throughout the day that we wouldn’t suddenly have all the training we needed to present with ease, but that we now had the opportunity to work with everything we had made possible in our bodies and for ourselves. We spoke about what it might take to move past difficult feelings, and how we felt like the two obvious solutions are to deal with those feelings away from presenting or to construct a professional persona robust enough to ignore the feelings altogether; a kind of protective performative self.

The day ended at the same time we arrived the day before. After the concentrated events of the previous 24 hours, there was a kind of fresh intimacy between the group members. We all vowed to stay in touch, meet up, and stay accountable to one another. Jean had warned us that the work would be difficult to keep up with once we were alone, and we had all realised how essential and transformative this kind of community and commitment could be for each of our research projects, careers, and ourselves at the deepest levels.

We want to thank everyone who made this experience possible: SGSAH for trusting us with this opportunity; Jean Sangster for daring to create this space with us; the director Lucy Byatt, Cicely Farrer and all the Hospitalfield staff for hosting us so warmly (everyone should visit their beautiful fernery!).

Finally, we want to thank all of the participants personally: Emily Beaney, Adam Nasser Benmakhlouf, Morgan Black Wood, Marta Duran Arranz, Matthew Floyd, Stella Gkekga, Niamh Gordon, Laura Harty, Velia Manyonga, Leena Nammari, Ashley Stein, Brandon Walker – for doing one of the kindest things ever: being so courageously and vulnerably present.

Find out more about Jean Sangster and her work here.

Find out more about Hospitalfield to visit, attend an event, or work with them here.

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