Sing Up, the Music Manifesto National Singing Programme, has projects under way all across the country to get children singing. In fact, there's so much going it can be hard to keep up with it all - Vocal Force, Sing Up Communities, ContinYou Clusters, Singing Playgrounds, City Songbirds... the list goes on. Let's have a look at one of those strands and find out what it's all about. This week, leaders of Sing Up Communities from around the country gathered in Birmingham to share their experiences so far. We asked Jo Hunter (above), Hearts & Minds Officer for Sing Up, to give us the lowdown.
MM: What is a Sing Up Community?
JH: Sing Up Communities are two-year projects that aim to embed sustainable singing activity in one geographical community. They have different focuses but across the board our communities encourage diverse styles of singing, a link between singing in and out of school and a long-term approach to making singing sustainable.
Where are the Sing Up communities?
There are currently 12 Sing Up Communities. They are: Bolton, Bristol, Coventry, Dales, Devon, East Kent, Greenwich, Southampton, Burton, Cumbria, East Coast and Lindsey.
Can anybody get involved?
Each community starts with a period of research and development where they identify the greatest areas of need and the groups they are going to work with. However, all Sing Up Communities are flexible and if you know about a Sing Up Community in your area then do get in touch as they're always interested in new collaborations. Sing Up Communities aren't just about singing in school - they also look at how to get people singing out of school hours, and not just children either. Some are working with the elderly, or young mothers, or choirs for school staff among others.
Will they reach people who wouldn't be singing otherwise?
Yes, in all Sing Up Communities the percentage of participants who haven't experienced singing activity before is a minimum of 80%.
What kind of activities are already under way?
Nine of the current Sing Up Communities have recently begun their main delivery phase so we are starting to see some exciting activity. Sing Up Dales have already set up three new training choirs, whilst Bolton and Burton both had big launch events where they got lots of children singing together. Sing Up East Coast had a training event for lots of new leaders in their area and Sing Up Cumbria are at the beginning of three new residencies for singing leaders in different clusters of schools across the county. The type of activity across the communities is very diverse - and there'll be a lot more to come over the next 18 months.
Any particularly innovative projects?
All of the projects were chosen for their innovation and creative ideas. More recently Sing Up Burton, Sing Up Devon and Sing Up East Coast have decided to work together on a project where children from each community will go out and record sounds that are reflective of their area. They will then send them to the other communities across the country and those children will compose songs about what they think it's like to live in the other areas. This way we'll create a cross-country song cycle to be performed - it's a really exciting new venture.
What was the main lesson learnt at this week's Sing Up Communities meeting?
Monday was the first time all the Sing Up Communities came together to share their ideas, experiences, strengths and challenges. It was a really useful (and fun!) day and it resulted in a lot of new collaborations and some steep learning curves. I think the main thing everyone got out of it was realising the support that they could gain from each other, and realising they weren't alone! It's very easy to get so involved in your project you forget to look outwards, but now we have a great network of communities that are all supporting each other.
Are there plans for any new communities or new projects you can tell us about?
We are currently finalising plans for next year but I hope that we will be able to work on some new Sing Up Community projects. Keep your eye on www.singup.org for more information.