On 18 July, we were delighted to celebrate BAPAM’s 40th anniversary with a special event at the Royal College of Music. Friends and partners from across the performing arts, academic and medical community came together to celebrate four decades of providing performers with the clinical help necessary to maintain and thrive in their careers.
Speeches from our Chair Peter Leathem OBE, our CEO Claire Cordeaux, Medical Trustee Dr Penny Wright, and the RCM’s Professor Aaron Williamon, took us through the history of BAPAM, our impact now and our mission for the future.
Dr Penny Wright spoke movingly about BAPAM’s history and described BAPAM’s founding in 1984 by Ian James. Ian was a Consultant Physician and clinical pharmacologist at the Royal Free hospital, and an accomplished viola player. His experience of treating his own performance nerves led to a special interest in the medical problems of musicians and performing artists, and he started to collect around him colleagues with a similar interest. Their vision from the beginning was for doctors and other clinicians to work with educators, researchers, and performers themselves, to build a comprehensive clinical service for performers of all types.
Penny reminded us of the hours of unpaid, dedicated work to establish and grow the organisation. We thank the many people whose expertise and dedication has enabled BAPAM to become what it is today, including Penny herself, whose 35 years of service with BAPAM are an extraordinary commitment. We wish her well as she takes a well-earned rest! We remembered those no longer with us, among them Kit Wynn-Parry, Ian James, Mike Shipley, Ian Winspur and Carol Chapman.
We are also hugely grateful to all our funders, large and small. Our work is only possible thanks to Help Musicians, Music Minds Matter, the Musicians’ Union, Equity, PRS Members Fund, the Royal Society of Musicians, Equity Charitable Trust, the Dance Professionals Fund, PPL and to all those who have donated funding over the years. Many of our partner organisations have been there from the early days and we wouldn’t have been able to build the service we provide today without them.
Since BAPAM was founded, we have grown to serve the whole performing arts sector, from music to theatre, from frontline performers to backstage staff.
We were proud to be co-chairing the PAMA Symposium at UCL, held this year for the first time outside the USA, and we welcomed delegates who joined our celebration, which coincided with the first day of the conference. Building on years of clinical practice, BAPAM developed our first Performing Arts Medicine syllabus in the early 2000s, which was used to plan the training days for clinicians that we organised twice a year, and which eventually fed into the development of the Masters’ degree in PAM at UCL, still the only qualification of its kind in the world. Co-chairing a major international medical conference in our landmark 40th anniversary year felt like an important milestone in our ongoing work training health professionals and establishing clinical standards in performing arts medicine.
Speeches concluded, the Consone Quartet, joined by Francesca Gilbert on the viola and Alexander Rolton on the cello, treated us to performances of Brahms and Mozart to remind us of the power of music and why it is so important to help performers continue to pursue their passion as their livelihood.
It was a convivial evening, and there was a vibrant atmosphere in the room. As our new patron, Johnny Marriot, lead singer of the band PET NEEDS, put it in his excellent blog:
“In an industry where things can feel fiercely competitive (not necessarily with each other, but just a pressure to always build momentum), it was refreshing and inspiring to be in a room full of people with one common goal: for creatives to be well.”
A great deal has been achieved in the last 40 years, and BAPAM CEO, Claire Cordeaux, had spoken earlier about our hopes for the next 40 years. Our goal is to ensure every performing arts worker in the UK has access to a clinical health service tailored to their unique needs. By building on the collective dedication in evidence at our anniversary event, and working together, we can achieve this.
To this collaboration, BAPAM brings clinical expertise and standards of best practice, our community of specialist practitioners, high quality training for performance and health professionals, a wealth of clinical data that can contribute to the research and evidence base, and 40 years’ experience helping thousands of people overcome health problems to achieve and sustain creative excellence.
Feedback from the event has been warm and positive and it is wonderful to see BAPAM’s clinical expertise and unique services recognised throughout the creative sector.
Many thanks to PPL, Penny Wright and the Centre of Performance Science who sponsored the event which also raised nearly £3000 in donations.
