An extended program for singers who want to bloom creatively as vocal improvisers. If you have a gift worth living and sharing - as a practitioner, collaborator, perhaps as a performer or teacher - if you can feel that gift in you but it’s not yet totally manifest - Creative Bloom is for you.
Spend 2027 weaving in emboldened creative community and finding your way to embed singing and vocal improvisation into your wild and precious life. This course is for people who love to sing, can sing in tune, keep a beat and want an adventure.
Here are the parts.
Dec 7th - 11th | Week 1: Foundations
Start here if you haven’t worked with me yet, or you’d like to review the foundations. Entering the artfrom of Collaborative Vocal Improvisation - CVI. Meeting one another. This is an extended introduction to CVI, where we slowly, kindly find our way into the art form and the group.
Not all who take the foundation will continue. Not all who start in April will take the foundation. If you’re not sure, check in with me.
Week 1 price: Tier 1 £500 Tier 2 £400 Tier 3 £300. Assistants (x 2) £200.
Weeks 2, 3 and 4: Coming Into Bloom
April 12-16 2027 | Creativity Deep Dive
We’ll play play play with creative CVI forms. The first day or so we’ll land slowly in the forms, the group, the body and the voice. When we’re ready we’ll dive in deep together into emergent bold Collaborative Vocal Improvisation. With deep listening, surrendering to aliveness, poetic expression, interlocking rhythms, harmonic beauty, and melodic explorations. We’ll do some healing forms here and there, dance frequently, we’ll have 1 Resonant Body floor-based somatic vocal practice. There’ll be a student cabaret (from us to us - no external audience) on the Thursday night. From circle singing all together, solo and small group forms, we’ll chart the spectrum of approaches to vocal improvisation.
June 14-18 2027 | Performance and Parts
Hopefully Holly Stoppit will teach this week, but right now (July 2026) I think she’s off in the wilds of summer and has not yet confirmed. If she doesn’t teach it, I can and will.
Holly is a dramatherapist and somatic IFS therapist, a clown and a fool who enjoys working with vocal improvisers.
In this week we will open up the inner life of the performing vocal improviser. What happens when there’s an audience, a camera, a microphone? Using IFS parts work, embodied play, wild ridiculousness and great tenderness, we will explore, heal and grow together.
On the Tuesday night there will be a student cabaret.
On the Thursday night there will be an open studio with an invited audience.
We need to look inside in order to be able to let our beautiful gifts flow freely when witnessed. Otherwise they distort, it feels funny or bad, and they stay half out or, just, in…. for a long time. Maybe a lifetime.
But there is power, beauty, and hugely important messages that I hear coming out of students’ voices all of the time. I believe the world needs to hear these, and you need to be comfortable, regulated, connected, safe and yourself as you do something so brave.
So we’ll devote 5 days to looking inside, as we open our mouths and let it all out.
September 13-17 | Creative Bloom
We will spend the week in creative blooming. On the Thursday night / final night there will be a public performance. On the Wednesday we will have a film and recording crew documenting our day. It will produce a shared google folder with the audio and video files for you to download, edit and use as you see fit; with the consent of everyone in them. On the Tuesday night there will be a student cabaret - just for us. On the Friday we will close the course and sing one another on. The intention is that you are left ready to meet the world as a vocal improviser, in your own wonderful way.
You might arrange your own meet-up at Caddaford barn in the winter without me! You will be independent and have left home by then <3
The year will be about cultivating your personal practice (I suggest 30 mins daily mon - Fri, more if you’re really on a learning journey. E.g. I did about 4h / day for a few years.) You’ll be cultivating your peer relationships, and navigating how you want to take this into your life. Is it through teaching? Performing? Ritual? And / or having fabulous local singing budies that you cultivate and tend rich collaboration with; and a practice that stirs the pot with your Muse Beloved.
What’s included, expected and requested:
Monthly zoom support calls between the three 2027 weeks.
Optional buddy support pairs - for additional checking in along the way.
Membership of the Singing Circle is included through the period, you can hop onto the weekly group coaching / singing calls (alternating), and access the online course library.
You are likely to meet your music theory edges. The Your Song course library is available for your home practice to grow your chops - work on your vocal musicianship. We won’t use very much course time for this, but if needed (and almost everyone needs it) you’ll be supported to work on it at home.
Cultivating a home practice; bringing a CVI practice into your particular life.
Cultivating peers. Who do you do CVI with ongoingly when the course ends? You’ll figure it out through the course.
Finding your voice, your fluency with the forms, overcoming the internal obstacles to being seen and heard; becoming at ease with singing and improvising with the doors and windows open. A flower blooming in a diverse garden with their unique magnificence - colour, shape, scent - wonderfully out.
It’s best if you don’t drink alcohol or use mind altering substances during the weeks. CVI is a deeply presencing practice - think yoga or meditation. Sobriety is best for it. Do not share alcohol among the group.
The fee includes all teaching from Briony (and Holly if she joins), Singing Circle membership for the duration, and the tech work of the film and video crew, editing sound to video. It doesn’t include further video editing to get this or that clip - that’s up to you for the clips you want to do something with.
What’s not included:
You organise and pay for your own accommodation and food - details below.
Q&A video call - Monday 14th September 7.30 - 8.30pm UK time.
To Apply
Please email info@brionygreenhill.com with a little bit about yourself and your interest. If we haven’t worked together before or recently, please attach 2 recordings: 1 min singing a song, 1 min improvising - both unacompanied. Voice memos on your phone are usually just fine.
Cost
Week 1, Foundations: Tier 1 £500, Tier 2 £400, Tier 3 £300
Weeks 2, 3 and 4 are a complete package:
Tier 1: £1500
Tier 2: £1150
Tier 3: £795
2 Assistant places: £500
Payment plans are ok: write me with a proposal: info@brionygreenhill.com.
Location
Caddaford Barn, TQ11 0JT
https://www.caddaford.co.uk/devon-dance-studio/
Timings
Mondays 10-5
Tuesdays 2.30 - 9pm (you have the morning to yourself)
Wednesdays 10-5
Thursdays 10-1 and 5-9pm. Free afternoon, perhaps sauna / river swim.
Fridays 10-4pm.
Accommodation Options
Caddaford Barn has 2 bnb studios available for you to rent directly if you wish to.
https://www.caddaford.co.uk/dance-studio-accommodation/
The double beds can become twins.
£680 4 nights (Mon-Tue-Wed-Thursday)
Double bedroom to yourself - £340.
Twin sharing - £170.
If you want to do this tick it on your application form and when there’s a few of you I will put you in touch with one another to arrange it amongst yourselves.
2. In Buckfastleigh - the Christian Community or Hometsays.
Usually about £35 / night.
3. Camping
Buckfastleigh has a lovely campsite called Beara farm, it’s actually currently closed so watch this space….. Ashburton has Summerhill campsite and Dartington has a campsite.
Food
Please bring food to share for potluck lunches / dinners when we have evening slots. We have access to a small kitchen. Folks are often gluten free and it’s good if diary / meat is on the side.
The Vibe
A few years ago, vocal improvisation teachers from around the world spent many months in conversation forming The Well global vocal improvisation network. We had rich conversations that led to this clear shared statement about our values and goals. These form the backbone of our work together on Creative Bloom.
Scroll down on this page. https://thewellvocal.com/about/
On the little play button Rhiannon reads them out, it’s lovely to hear that.
Location
Caddford Barn is between Totnes and Buckfastleigh. We’re a short distance from several river Dart swim spots, and a drive to the Dartmeet sauna.