30 May

10:00

ToetsSteen Studio

Kempenaerstraat 11B, Amsterdam

A voice liberation workshop in English for the LGBTQ+ community, creating a safe space to connect your inner and outer worlds through improvised song and authentic expression.

Inside to Outside: Queer Edition

More info & tickets

Queer people often share a great deal of pain and unspoken stories, but also joy and Pride. Many of us begin our lives already feeling different—not only from the world around us, but sometimes even from our own (straight) families. Throughout our lives we may face stigma, coming out struggles, discrimination, religious pressure, and the expectation to fit into certain norms within the queer community itself. We learn to hide parts of who we truly are, to hold back, to stay small. And even when we finally live more openly, the pain from the times we couldn’t express our authentic selves may still live in us.

Voice Liberation can be a powerful way to give voice to our inner world—to express who we are at our core, to make space for the hurt we carry, and to let what is alive in us finally move and be heard. I want to create a safe space together where we can sing our true selves, support one another, and let our queer light shine through improvised song.

This workshop, open to all LGBTQ+ people and English speakers, is about connecting your inner and outer worlds. It isn’t about singing beautifully or achieving something through your voice. It’s about authenticity: allowing yourself to be exactly where you are in this moment, and expressing that honestly. The inward journey invites you to look gently and truthfully at what is present within you. The outward journey—through singing—can feel incredibly freeing, because whatever lives inside you is finally allowed to exist, to take up space, to sound. And everything that receives space can begin to move again.

Everyone can sing

No one else has your voice or your story. When you start trusting that, you may begin to feel more and more freedom in your expression. In a small group (maximum 12 participants), you will explore your voice, your sound, your inner landscape. Some participants may sing beautifully but still feel held back. Others may only feel free when no one is listening. And some may believe they cannot sing at all, yet still feel the longing to try. We believe singing is natural—not a talent that some people have and others don’t. You don’t need to try to sing “well.” You already can sing.

The day will include:

Bodywork
Meditation
Connecting body and voice
Reflection on what is happening within you
Singing in the group, in pairs, and solo

Throughout the day we return to the questions: “What is alive in me right now?” and “How does this sound in my singing?”
The focus is on meeting yourself with honesty, connecting with what lives inside you, and allowing your voice to carry your truth outward.

About the facilitator

Kes Blans is not only a voice liberation facilitator, but also an actor and theatre maker. With great enthusiasm and an open heart, he aims to get people singing. He believes it is important that everyone is free to be who they are. In his work with voice liberation, the goal is to explore your authentic self and connect with others from that place. He runs his own practice in Amsterdam, leads various workshops at the Centre for Voice Liberation and he teaches in the voice liberation training program.

“For me, voice liberation is about expressing what lives deep inside you through sound, singing, and music. The beautiful things, but also pain and sorrow. Trauma, big and small, wants to be expressed and shared.”

“For a long time, I believed that as an extroverted person, I expressed and shared everything. I can easily speak about the cancer I had and the intense back pain that followed. Through voice liberation, I discovered that talking is not the same as expressing. By expressing my traumas through singing, the pain has disappeared. My back will always remain a place through which my body signals when I am crossing my boundaries, both physically and mentally. In those moments, the task is to listen and to give expression through singing. That can be painful, sad, but at the same time also beautiful and light. Even in expressing and sharing sorrow, there is joy, because you truly connect with someone. You share raw, real emotion, and that is always beautiful and valuable.”

“I would actually like to invite everyone—secretly even the whole world—to share, to sing, to complain, to sigh, to rejoice, to allow whatever is present in that moment to exist, shamelessly and fully. And “fully” can mean something different for everyone; for one person it is a sigh, for another a cry of joy. Everything is allowed to be there: every fear, every pain, every trauma, every happiness.”

Details

Group size: 12

Pricing, normal income: 120,- / lower income: 80,-