IVACON 2018
In April i attended the first ever European IVACON conference 2018 which was held in Edinburgh! This was a opportunity for IVA (institute of vocal advancement) teachers to go for a week long conference to learn from the worlds best Master teachers!
In a nut shell this was one of the most fun, enjoyable and informative weeks of my life! There were over 100 teachers from over 30 countries! Everyday we had classes from 9am to 6pm from Master teachers and outside spokespeople, with a well earned lunch break to socialise with our fantastic network of teachers from all over the world.
When i first got to the conference you could see the excitement when everyone was getting there IVA bags with their goodies inside. We were all introduced to all the Master teachers and ambassadors, it was great to see so many passionate people about the voice in one room!
We were then set to go to our individual classes for our levels of teaching! I am not going to lie i was a little nervous as i have recently qualified as an Advanced level 4 teacher which has taken me 8 years of training! This meant in the words of our area representative teacher Laura 'Anna your now in the big girl classes"!
When i came into the first class we were told there was a microphone going around that you had to speak into for those who didn't attend so could access the classes. Well.. i sat at the back of the class to get the feel of it all! But after this first class i could see how supportive all the other teachers were and the master teachers taking the class!
After this i sat at the front and asked my questions and comments with confidence over the microphone. I also got the opportunity this week to sing in front of all the 100 teachers in a song interpreted class as a genie big! Well if you can sing in front of 100 signing teachers you can then have a singing lesson the next day with Jeffery a master teacher who teaches 'The killers' lead singers Brendon Flowers!
I feel over the week i learnt so much more information on the human voice and also felt i could go away and access even more from my students voices. I met so many like minded friends that i feel i can network with and feel we can all help each other even thought we are sometimes so far away in our studios!
The very last night we all had a karaoke evening! What a great night this was! None of the teachers took themselves too seriously and just had so much fun singing in groups singing in their languages! This summed the whole week everyone felt so at ease to be themselves! We all learned new information that will help us teach to the best of our ability for a long time to come!!
Anna Leigh x