Sarah Bartlett has spent many years working with Parkinson’s UK teaching Tai Chi and Qigong but during the 2020 lockdown, in-person classes stopped and Sarah needed to diversify.  One of her client’s with Parkinson’s was having great difficulty with speech - in particular volume - and it was becoming progressively worse, with the patient slowly ‘disappearing’ into himself. Sarah decided to try a different approach; alongside the Qigong exercises, she asked the patient to pick a song he particularly loved. Knowing the healing power of music in her own life, Sarah felt that singing would be a great way to encourage and support this person with their voice. Not only did the patient begin to speak noticeably louder and with more clarity, his mood changed significantly and the lessons became a joyful thing for both parties.

This became the seed of an idea to run classes that could encompass Qigong sound techniques, therapeutic breathing and posture exercises with singing and voice production. Sarah researched the Lee Silverman technique and quickly realised that she was on the right track. Sarah knew just the person to collaborate with for these new classes – her close friend,colleague of over thirty years and qualified Music Therapist, Jo Levine.  Jo and Sarah started meeting up and discussing how they might move forward with the idea and ‘VAST’ was born in 2023.

Since that time they have had three sets of MA Music Therapy students on placement with them from UWE Bristol. Each placement lasts six months and all the students are excellent musicians. One of those students, Sophie Barford - now fully qualified and already a highly accomplished musician - has become the third team member, as of Spring 2026.

In its very short three years, VAST has grown into a wonderful thing of joy. The classes invoke tears and laughter and real positivity. VAST group members have been the subject of a research paper which hopefully will be published, they have sung with some of the cream of Bristol’s musicians, taken part in a benefit gig, enjoyed some wonderful end of term celebrations and parties, and made a film for ‘Movers and Shakers’. WE are VAST!