Our Story
We are the UK Vocal Improv Collective — a group of artists and facilitators dedicated to creating performances, recordings, events, and festivals that use vocal improvisation not only as an artistic form but as a tool for human connection.
Brought together by the trials and tribulations of the pandemic and sparked by Briony Greenhill, the founding members of the collective offered The Daily 10&6 - twice-daily online vocal improvisation sessions, that became an emotional and creative lifeline for both participants and facilitators. The undeniably shiny silver lining of this challenging time is that we started talking regularly, co-creating spaces, and really digging into what collaborative vocal improvisation actually means to us. Most importantly, we realised that by joining our forces together, we could reach more people and help the artform to flourish.
Our first in-person offering came to fruition in autumn 2022 - a residential ‘festival-retreat’ at Penny Brohn outside Bristol. We welcomed 80 improvisers to join together in song and celebration, held in the care and love of a retreat alongside the excitement and spontaneity of a festival. Over an immersive 5 days, participants experienced a range of workshops on everything from body music, collaborative vocal improvisation, circle-singing, embodiment and live looping, as well as evening performances and an open stage. As with any new endeavour, we discovered what we had made as we were making it, and together we began to re-imagine how to create a way of being that honours our individual and collective potential.
A second festival-retreat followed in 2023, testing exciting new concepts such as the Improv Bazaar, a self-organized space for participants to offer workshops and practice together, and a new way for participants to sign up to workshops, offering a greater degree of flexibility and spontaneity. We also put deeper emphasis on singing in connection with nature, with sessions by the river, the campfire, and ritual by candlelight. For five days we practiced, we sang, we moved, we cried, we laughed, we lived into reality a beautiful community.
In 2024, we spread our wings and toured the country, offering shorter, non-residential weekend bursts in Southampton, Leeds and London. Expanding our vision further, we launched the Vocal Improv Symposium which included presentations, panels and discussions looking at this artform through different systems of thought as well as reflecting together. We also invited leading vocal improvisers for evening performances and debuted our immersive Vocal Improv Dance Party experience, a live looping, participatory extravaganza - a club night like no other!
We’ve taken 2025 as a year to digest, integrate, and reflect on the journey so far, as well as vision into what the future holds. 2026 and 2027 may look slightly different as we focus in. Watch this space!
Some of the exciting projects that have germinated and grown from this closer collaboration, connection, and cross-pollination over the years include:
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The Daily 10&6: The online lifeline that kicked it all off throughout the pandemic
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Remembering: An collaborative album of improvised songs fresh out of the pandemic
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Anthropos: Reimagining ancient human sounds through spontaneous song
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Oöm: Tender and ridiculous vocal mastery that will make you feel things
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The Collective Identity project: A collaborative enquiry of dancers with Parkinson’s
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The inimitable time-travel livestream of Kate Smith and Uran Apak
We are grateful to so many influential artists, teachers, and improv greats, who have influenced us all and who we would like to honour for their contribution to this artform. Thank you particularly to Bobby McFerrin for his incredible innovation and continuous inspiration, and also to Rhiannon for her pioneering teaching resources - Vocal River. Thank you also to our friends and collaborators in the UK including Jenni Roditi, Cleveland Watkiss, and many many more.
Our Mission
Our mission is to cultivate vibrant spaces for human connection and transformation through collective vocal improvisation experiences, welcoming both seasoned vocal explorers and curious newcomers.
Our Vision
We want to build a future that nurtures healthy humans and a healthy planet. Taking inspiration from our beautiful practice of vocal improvisation, we believe that by doing things differently within our team and in our events we can be a part of a larger shift of institutional practices and collective behaviors.
Our vision is to foster a transformative and paradigm-shifting culture of collaborative emergence inspired by regenerative leadership and interdependence.
Woah there! What does THAT mean?! Read below for a bit more info on these big ol’ terms.
Collaborative Emergence
A group creative process in which all voices are valued and contribute to the shared outcome. There is no defined endpoint - anything could unfold and the collective vision is discovered together. No one is in charge and the interactions between the group members are as significant in the group creation as the contributions from each individual.
How this shows up in the music:
In collective vocal improvisation spaces there can come a point at which the singers enter a flow together, where the group seems to develop one mind, and what emerges is greater, more surprising, more beautiful, more moving, than what any one singer might have imagined on their own.
How this shows up in our organisation:
This is mirrored in the UKVIC production team, where we work together to allow dreams and decisions to arise from the centre of the collective - the space in between us all. We follow the flow to serve the collective vision, listening deeply to make sure everyone is heard, agreement is found, and enthusiasm about the shared vision stays alive. This is working as a group mind or hive mind, which serves what we affectionately call the ‘blob’ of UKVIC, aka the emergent, shared and too-big-for-any-of-us-alone vision which we then make a reality!
Find out more: This way of collaborating has been researched in the world of devised theatre and more, see this from Sawyer and Dezutter (2009) and Parolin & Pellegrinelli (2020) if you fancy diving deeper.
Regenerative Leadership
A paradigm-shifting, non-hierarchical approach to leadership that nurtures life-affirming organisations, teams and communities which are restorative, resilient, and adaptable. It strives to create spaces where people feel valued, understood, connected, and therefore able to unleash their (innate) ability to contribute to a shared vision. It also acknowledges a responsibility to steer our path towards sustainability and collective wellbeing.
What this means for UKVIC:
When we improvise together, we are constantly dancing with the manifold possibilities of stepping into leadership as well as following along with the flow. To collectively make a really great piece of music from scratch, we all need to feel welcome, safe, and supported to offer our gifts to the music when it feels right, and to give space when it is needed.
This is how we strive to collaborate together non-hierarchically as an organising team. We also recognise that the strength of our relationships is at the core of the health of the group, and so conflict resolution has become an essential and embedded process. We endeavour to navigate challenges with loving communication and radical honesty, and ensure that friendships and working relationships are nurtured. We feel the grounded strength that this brings, and witness the effects of this work rippling out into the collective wellbeing and buzz of aliveness in the events that we offer.
Find out more: You can read more from Van Peborgh (2024)
Interdependence
A principle that takes inspiration from how living organisms and systems work and self-regulate in nature. It acknowledges the deep interconnectedness among all aspects of life, recognising that our actions have a profound impact not only on our immediate environment but also on the broader ecosystem and future generations.
What this means for UKVIC:
During an improvisation, any one choice made by a singer will influence the whole. The music created is an aural manifestation of the networks of relationships between the singers, and the musical histories, and the personal backgrounds, of those singers. It’s an incredibly complex web that reaches through time and space, transforming it all into the music of the moment.
As folks curating vocal improvisation events, we care deeply about how we impact the immediate spheres we touch as well as the wider world, both in the human and more-than-human realms. We take great care to nurture the relationships between the team and we work hard to consider how to make our event spaces safer and more welcoming. For example, by asking everybody at our events to agree to our Safer Spaces Policy, offering quiet spaces, a well-being room and dedicated listening ears at all our events and as much as we possibly can- curating our programming as anti-grind culture. We are dedicated to widening our pool of practitioners because we believe in the strength of diverse teams and we want to represent the diverse musical history of vocal improvisation. We offer bursaries to those who are more impacted by systemic racism, classism and ableism, and we continue to question our blind spots with the help of radical inclusion specialists. We take care to travel as sustainably as we can to our events, to measure our ecological impact and always include deep nature connection offerings whenever we gather.
Find out more: You can read more from The Harmony Project (2025)
Our Values
Our values, like the values of the artform, are centred around collaboration, deep listening, mutual respect, authenticity, and human to human connection. These qualities are embedded in the way that we endeavour to work together as a team and also encompass the core values of our festival retreat.
Our events are curated by a non-hierarchical organisation team who endeavour to practice what we preach. Our organisational style is considered, heartfelt, playful and flexible. We embrace conflict resolution and deep listening, and are committed to baking feedback into everything we do.
Safer Spaces
At UK Vocal Improv, we believe that everyone should be able to fully engage in vocal improvisation and that everyone has a right to be welcomed and encouraged. To support this we have established this Safer Spaces Policy.
By participating in UK Vocal Improv events, you agree to abide by this Safer Spaces Policy and contribute to creating a positive and inclusive atmosphere for all attendees. Together, we can foster a community that celebrates diversity, creativity, and mutual respect.
Our (Evolving) Community Ecology
Click on the circles below to find out more
How to get involved!
We are a small team with big dreams. To scale up and become sustainable, we're looking for a lot of different forms of support. When we are gearing up for our next event, we will need volunteers, but in the meantime, the best way to get involved is by checking out our Calls or by donating money to our organization.
Join our
Board of Trustees
We are looking to recruit a non-executive board of directors to advise us as we enter this new stage of development.
We are looking for interested individuals with expertise in the following areas: accounting and finances; legal; business planning; marketing; fundraising.
Board members will be consulted for advice, networking, and support. Initial duties will involve meeting on a bi-monthly basis to advise the Production and Holding Teams as we organise UKVIC events and endeavour to create a long-reaching plan for achieving financial stability. Please note that board positions will not be remunerated at this stage and members bios will be shared publicly on our website.
Join our
Steering Group
We are looking to form a Steering Group of dedicated members of our community that want to have a hand in shaping our future.
You are the right person to join the Steering Group if
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you are a dedicated member of our community
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you've been to some (all?) of our events
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you love vocal improv
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you care about connecting with our communities across the UK
Your duties will be the following
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gather every 3-6 months online
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give feedback about the production team's plans
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provide perspectives from participants' point of view
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be a conduit for community thoughts, feedback, requests etc.
Support us through a donation!
Each event we produce requires hundreds of hours of behind the scenes work from our production team. Much of this work is done voluntarily, but as we expand, we will need significant capitol to invest in things like booking venues, website hosting, travel etc.
By donating money to our project, you will be supporting the sustainable development of an exciting community held by passionate and skilled team!
Explore the Collective
We are a collective with various degrees of involvement from a wide number of people. While our main production team is only 6 people, our work has only been possible due to the contributions of many. We are all people who love vocal improv and are eager for the scene to grow, for our collaborations to expand, and to nurture the growth of a vibrant community.
Meet Our Directors
Uran Apak
London-based Uran is a space travelling, looping alien from outer space who creates improvised electronic music and enjoys taking others on cosmic voice journeys. Uran often handles the UKVIC social media, holds our conflict resolution process with Kate M and is the slow-time mama of the group.
Jaka Škapin
Jaka is a wizz kid of the arts business as well as a rhythm and harmony nerd. He's the force behind The Well and a member of Anthropos and is currently diving into his Slovenian heritage through researching Slavic folk song. Jaka is a master of industry know-how and maintains UKVIC's connections with the wider world of vocal improv.
Kate Mellors
Kate is a magic forest pixie who leads a forest theatre school, outdoor choirs and is building her home in a wood in Southampton. She is a member of Polly Gone Wrong and Oöm. Kate often contributes to research and copy and along with Uran is the holder of our conflict process! Kate is our queen of play and always brings the silly!
Kate Smith
Kate is a globe trotting singer of many interests, often found between London and Lisbon. She's the creator of the Embodied Voice and is inspired in her singing by all things movement. She is a part of Oöm and Anthropos. Kate is the team octopus, managing the spreadsheets, websites, tickets, moneys and more.
Phoebe Martha
Phoebe is a voracious manifestor, with years of experience under her belt leading community music projects and performing her own music under Penniless Cove. Of Welsh origins, she is a member of Oöm, co-facilitator of Antidote and Vocal Playground with Emma. Phoebe serves the hustle and holds the timelines.
Meet Our Board of Trustees
This is coming soon... Stay tuned!
Our Partners
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