PRS Members’ Fund, the charity that provides funding to PRS songwriters and composers during difficult times, and BAPAM, the UK experts in performing arts medicine, have partnered to launch a first of its kind digital tool to support the health and wellbeing of music creators.

is a digital platform that provides personalised insights into physical and mental wellbeing with a special emphasis on the specific health challenges that songwriters, composers and musicians can face in their career. InTune also offers resources to help manage finances, strategies for writer’s block and more, to help build resilience and maintain peak performance.

Officially launched at the PRS AGM and London Members’ Day (Tuesday 3 June 2025), InTune uses an intuitive digital interface to give personalised health assessments with tailored resources and signposting to Ģ��tv support. All resources provided by InTune have the clinical backing of BAPAM.

The health of musicians and composers recently hit global headlines, with Chappell Roan calling for better support for musicians and composers’ health from record companies at the Grammys. Sam Fender also highlighted his own difficulties with his mental and physical health and how that has impacted him as a performer.

InTune is free to use, with Ģ��tv support available to PRS members from PRS Members’ Fund and BAPAM:

John Logan, General Secretary, PRS Members’ Fund, said:

“Working in the music industry is tough. Multiple challenges on both health and finances can affect songwriters and composers’ capacity to continue creating. We’re delighted to have collaborated with BAPAM to develop InTune – designed as a comprehensive and clinically robust tool to give an in-the-moment view of how you are doing, along with personalised information and resources. Whatever your situation, the PRS Members’ Fund is here to assist and support you beyond the music”.

Heather Small MBE, soul singer-songwriter, PRS Members’ Fund patron, said:

“InTune is an innovative health and wellbeing facility for music creators by music creators and can be appreciated by us all”.

Claire Cordeaux, CEO, BAPAM said it’s a challenge across the industry:

“Research shows that 75% of musicians and composers will have an injury or illness that impacts their career. Many of these problems are preventable. With most musicians and composers working in freelance positions, it is vital that they are supported with Ģ��tv, clinically sound health and wellbeing support. To address this need, InTune provides immediate information, tailored to users’ individual responses. We are delighted that the PRS Members’ Fund recognised the importance of this tool to reach out to the musician and composer community.”

Dr Finola Ryan, Ģ��tv Director, BAPAM, spoke about how important it was that there was a dedicated clinical oversight for the tool. She said:

“In today’s digital world, musicians and composers can easily feel overwhelmed when searching for health guidance. The internet is flooded with generic, trending, and unreliable advice, but what music creators need is information that speaks directly to their craft and its physical, cognitive, and emotional demands, as well as the environmental and organisational challenges they face. InTune has been created by clinicians with performing arts medicine expertise, to enable musicians and composers to make informed decisions when addressing health concerns. InTune is not a replacement for a medical assessment but signposts users to further support when needed, while improving occupational health, saving users’ time, and supporting them to have healthier working lives and sustainable careers.”

Did you know that strategies for meeting the psychological demands of your rehearsal schedule, expectations, and performances can also help you avoid physical injury?

Our guest blog from this month looks at the role of Performance Psychology in injury prevention.��

How often do you worry about getting injured?�� As a performer, you may be thinking quite a lot, actually.�� How much time do you spend each day, trying to minimise your risk of injury?

Injuries for performing artists are not just the result of a physical strain or trauma, they have a psychological component too.�� In fact, there is a strong relationship between psychological factors and injury occurrence.�� Our thoughts, feelings and mindset, have a big impact on how we perform and can be hugely important in preventing injuries.

Researchers in the world of elite sport, have found plenty of evidence to suggest that performers with high levels of stress, anxiety, or low self-esteem, may be more at risk of injury than those with lower levels.�� It has also been found that psychological interventions, including, stress management techniques, cognitive restructuring, mindfulness, imagery and seeking social support, can be highly effective in lowering injury risk.

So, what does all this mean to you as a performing artist?�� Well, the research indicates similar results with performing artists.�� If you are struggling to meet the demands of your rehearsal schedule, expectations, or performances, then you could be putting yourself at higher risk of injury.

Psychological influencers of injury risk

Stress and anxiety: the relationship between stress and injury occurrence has been shown in both the sporting and performing arts worlds.�� Performers with higher stress are likely to experience more injuries than those with less stress in their lives.�� One of the explanations for this relationship, is that the stress and anxiety can impact a performer’s attention, meaning that they may miss important environmental clues, leading to an accident, or over exertion.

Stress and anxiety can be accompanied by increased muscle tension that interferes with normal coordination and may increase the chance of injury, while practising and performing.

Personality factors: Perfectionism, or a high need for achievement, can lead performers to push themselves beyond their limits.�� Striving for the perfect performance can sometimes result in overtraining, inadequate rest and injuries.

Perfectionistic concerns such as worrying about fears of being evaluated negatively by others, and feeling anxious about the gap between expectations and current level of performance, have been found to relate to injury risk.

Prevention through performance psychology

• Manage your stress levels – Your overall stress is an accumulation of stress across all areas of your life.�� Remember, when stress levels are high, you will be more vulnerable to injury.
• Be prepared – If you know you have a potentially stressful time coming up (e.g., an important gig, an audition, an exam, a new contract), take time to think about how you can reduce stress in other areas of your life to compensate.
• When big life events happen – take time to deal with them and decrease your stress in other areas. You could do things like reduce your practice time, postpone an audition, get help in preparing for a performance, get a massage, ask someone to cook a nice meal for you, always have an early night where possible.
• Stress reduction techniques – learning techniques such as meditation, deep breathing exercises, and visualisation can help keep you focused under pressure and reduce the probability of injury-inducing distractions.
• Set goals around practising and performance – setting realistic goals and attainable objectives for your practice time and performance can reduce the risk of injury due to self-doubt, or fear. This can also help manage perfectionism tendencies.
• Positive self-talk – reflect on what you say to yourself during preparation and performance. Replacing negative thoughts with positive, encouraging self-talk can improve your self-esteem and confidence.

For those working with performing artists – Think about the environment you create for creators and performers to study/work/practise in.�� Does it encourage participants to discuss and raise concerns about things they are finding stressful, the demands of their role, or worries about potential injuries?�� How might you start to facilitate this moving forwards?

For more tips and actionable skills for Physical Health and Injury Prevention, why not join BAPAM’s free webinar with Performance Physiotherapist, Drusilla Redman? Sign up now for this session which takes place on 8th March.

Read more posts in this series: Performance Psychology articles by Dr Anna Waters

Dr Anna Waters

With over 20 years expertise supporting the performance and mental health of performing artists and athletes, ��has been fortunate to work with prominent classical musicians, opera singers, ballet dancers, recording artists, stand-up comedians and actors. She has enjoyed working with national music conservatories, ballet companies and television companies.

Anna loves drawing on her experience of both the performing arts and sporting worlds to help facilitate her work with her clients. She believes that there are many similarities between both arenas, with performers being talented and ambitious people, whose lives are spent working towards big events. Where each day is filled with training, practice, and preparation for the next big event, where they are required to consistently deliver their best performance under the scrutiny of the world.

With a strong academic background, including a PhD in applied sport psychology, Anna spent seven years working alongside Professor Steve Peters sharing The Chimp Model ideologies. This combined with her sport psychology backgrounds forms foundations to her work.

Anna is a Chartered member and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and is registered as a practitioner with Ģ��tv (BAPAM).

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Related Resources

BAPAM Healthy Practice Training Webinars: Our FREE expert-led sessions for artists, creators and professionals are designed to equip you with essential techniques and strategies to sustain creative practice and prevent physical and mental health problems

BAPAM‘s free health information resources are grounded in research, evidence and best practice. Find actionable tips on Managing Performance Anxiety ���Ի���Psychological Self-Care plus a range of health resources to support sustainable creativity.

We are grateful to Millie Packer and Sarah Kelsey who have redesigned this resource for us as part of their Graphic Design HND project exploring the concept and practicalities of art and design in relation to the subject of wellbeing.

If you have any concerns about your voice, or about any other aspect of your performance related health, contact BAPAM on 020 7404 8444 for advice about Ģ��tv clinical support for creative practitioners. Remember – the sooner you address any problems, the less damage you will do.

More Resources

Master healthy practice, prevent injury and enhance performance. BAPAM’s full range of essential resources for artists, creative practitioners, teachers and industry organisations can be downloaded here: Factsheets and Resources

Healthy Practice Training Sessions

You can also book your place at a BAPAM healthy performance training session. All our events are currently being delivered as free webinars: Training and Events

Every year BAPAM helps with hundreds of inquiries about health problems related to working in the performing arts. These include musculoskeletal problems caused by strain and intensive use of parts of the body, vocal health issues which need Ģ��tv diagnosis and treatment, psychosocial problems including performance anxiety, stress related to the uncertain nature of the work (82% of the workforce are freelance) and more complex and enduring mental health conditions as well as hearing health problems. Performers, in common with other freelancers, tend to ignore health problems and seek help at a very late stage.�� The research shows that, at any one time, 75% of performers will have a health problem.

We were delighted when the Royal Society of Medicine chose to partner with BAPAM on a professional development event held on March 27, 2019 to consider occupational health in the performing arts sector and its relationship to the wider ‘gig economy’. We were lucky to have a stellar line up of speakers from the arts, academic and clinical worlds to provide a range of perspectives on this question.

Kicking off the conference, Jane Dyball, former CEO of the����outlined the complexity of the industry and the relationship of an artist to industry bodies at different times of their career. In the early stages, the artist may be very dependent on promoters, venues, managers, but that relationship changes when they are successful so that those bodies are dependent on the artist for their own success.

Dr. Colin Thomas, Chief Ģ��tv Officer of the BBC, added to the picture as he described the plethora of jobs undertaken by freelancers in broadcasting and the difficult balance between their tax status as self-employed workers and the duty of care issues that organisations owe to both employees and freelancers.

, BBC Radio 4 broadcaster and BAPAM Patron, described the moment when he suffered paralysis of one of his vocal cords and his journey back to full health and employment. He spoke with courage of the isolation and anxiety of losing your identity and the difficulties of accessing the right care in this very Ģ��tv area.

��of the Royal College of Music’s Centre for Performance Science, described results from recent research which demonstrated the lack of general fitness, particularly amongst student musicians.

In the afternoon we heard examples of good practice from Peter Garden of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic ���Ի���, Head of Dance Science at Trinity Laban. Peter outlined Liverpool Philharmonic’s approach to developing and supporting performance excellence through providing health and wellbeing services to orchestra musicians. He and the Board have seen the impact of this investment on enhanced performance, improved employee satisfaction and engagement, and positive signs of reduced reliance on freelancers to cover sickness absence due to playing-related musculoskeletal injuries. Professor Redding outlined the advances in healthy practice in dance education and how a Ģ��tv health insurance scheme is helping to provide access to occupational health services.

Dr Rob Hampton, RCGP representative at Public Health England and a practising GP, described his own caseload and the difficulties for freelancers in accessing support with work-related health problems, the impact on the NHS and the evidence that working itself improves health. Dr John Etherington, NHS lead for rehabilitation, drew on research on performance enhancement in the military and in sport to demonstrate that effective training for the physical and vocation-related psychological demands as well as good rehabilitation after an injury can significantly improve health.

In this conference, the problems were clearly laid out and examples of solutions are available, but whose responsibility is it to drive the improvements? With over £5bn in UK annual revenue coming from the performing arts, it doesn’t seem sensible NOT to look after the health of the workforce, and leaving this role to charities on their own is not a sustainable solution.

Here are some thoughts from the BAPAM team on how the current position might be improved. First of all, to answer the question, who is responsible for improving performing arts health?

1. Employers and Education Providers. These bodies do have a duty of care to employees and students. Liverpool Philharmonic has demonstrated the economic and artistic case for employers investing in healthcare. Many employers can and do support occupational health for performers. A consistent approach here would improve the health of 18% of the workforce. There are 50,000 students in performing arts education and Professor Williamon’s research, the practice in Dance Education and the work of the Healthy Conservatoires Network demonstrate what can and should be done to develop healthy behaviours in students and ready them for the realities of working life.
2. The Freelance Performer. The performer is responsible for their own health (however, see point 3 below), including seeking help at an early stage and following the health behaviours which are evidenced to reduce the likelihood of health problems. Freelance performers who have learned these behaviours in education should be equipped for the working environment, but many performers have not had access to performance education. The provision of educational sessions and written and online materials together with peer support networks is crucial for this group. The Musicians’ Union, ISM, Equity, Help Musicians, Music Support as well as BAPAM and many other individual coaches and writers are currently offering support in this area.
3. The Performance Environment.��Research evidence tells us that good self-care is best achieved within organisational structures that support individual wellbeing. While other organisations in the industry may not have a��direct��responsibility for performers, they do have a responsibility for ensuring that the environment enables the performer to carry out their personal health responsibility. In addition to statutory health and safety duties, a culture and environment that encourages and supports healthy practice will help performers. As a very basic example, hydration is vital for performers – if there is no water available in a venue, it becomes difficult for the performer to practise this behaviour. What if the acoustics are so bad in a venue that the only way performers can hear themselves is turning the amps up excessively? What if there is a culture in your organisation that discriminates against certain groups or individuals, contributing to negative social relationships and mental health problems? What if the people you depend on don’t know where to go for help when they need it?

If this is a structure we can organise around, then��what would a Health Manifesto for the Performing Arts look like?

1. Everyone in the performing arts world needs to understand what healthy practice means, from the educator to the employer, individual performance professionals and any organisation or individual working in the business (managers, promoters, agents, labels etc).
2. Everyone needs to know where and how to get clinical help when they need it.
3. All funding options should be explored to develop a system-wide approach to providing for the health needs of performers, combining charitable funding sources with other sources of support including industry-specific insurance schemes, access to work funding etc.

We welcome responses by email at��info@bapam.org.uk

BAPAM has convened a Psychosocial Working Group to bring together clinicians including doctors, clinical psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors, charities working with performing arts professionals to support mental health, and academics conducting key research.

The group provides a forum in which approaches to care and support can be discussed, and clinical leadership can be provided for developing and instantiating a service designed to support performing arts workers with issues related to vocation-related physical and mental health issues. We are using the NHS-approved evidence base produced by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), who review the published evidence for healthcare��interventions from a clinical and a cost-effectiveness perspective, to map the services available to performing artists against the clinical evidence for best practice and identify gaps in those services.

The prevalence of mental health problems is considerably higher in the performing arts community than in the general population, and suicide rates are well above the national average. There is an acute awareness of the problems within the��performing arts industry and many artists have been sharing their mental health experience in the context of their work.

The group has mapped many of the initiatives developed to support performers including Help Musicians UK’s����helpline,��,��, which has a particular focus on addictions, Equity supported����sessions at the Actors Centre,�� Music & You,����and �����ʴ���’s own free service, which provides clinical assessments for performers across the UK. In addition, there is a growing number of practitioners who have trained to work in this area, building on insights gained from previous careers in the arts industries, for example, the��.

We are grateful to have had so many valuable insights from practitioners and agencies involved in this important work and together we’ve begun identifying what is available, what is missing and how we should work together to support a comprehensive approach to mental health services for performers.

Mental illness is not a straightforward condition. Some people will experience just one episode of mental ill-health in their lives. Of those who receive a brief intervention, half will recover and never have another one. Others, however, experience recurrent episodes and will continue to do so through their lives even though they may be well for significant periods of time. It is essential that performing arts professionals experiencing challenges to their mental health receive accurate diagnoses as quickly as possible to ensure they access the right care. Where brief interventions are indicated, these should be delivered by practitioners who have a track record of working with performing arts clients. Ģ��tv practitioners, however they are employed, need to be able to access professional support from mental health Ģ��tvs to ensure they are making the right diagnoses and to refer on if necessary.

Discussions to date have identified many areas for action, but the immediate areas to take forward have been identified as follows:

1. Development of guidance for the performing arts industry covering points of best practice for performers, care providers and all organisations commissioning care for performers
2. Rapid access to clinical assessment to determine the best care pathway
3. Provision of brief interventions tailored to the needs of performing artists, ��focusing on performance anxiety
4. Access to mental health Ģ��tvs (e.g. psychiatrists and clinical psychologists) for advice on the management of patients’ complex needs, for practitioners working outside the NHS
5. An annual CPD event for psychosocial practitioners working in, and developing their career in performing arts health care
6. A collective effort to support fundraising which aims to meet identified gaps for all practitioners

Tuesday 5th February to Tuesday 26th February

We have teamed up with the��Incorporated Society of Musicians to��present a series of free webinars looking at musicians’ health. Our performance health experts will lead��the sessions, exploring��solutions to problems frequently encountered in music careers.��For��more information on each session and how to book a free place��.

Looking after yourself on tour:��Tuesday 5th February
Health in the gig economy:��Wednesday 13th February
Resilience and bullying in the workplace:��Tuesday 19th February
Preventing playing related injury:��Tuesday 26th February

https://www.ism.org/healthandwellbeingBAPAM