….and I’m late already!

It’s the 19th of January as I’m writing this. It really annoys me when I find out-of-date information on other people’s websites so I should have made it more of a priority, but here we are, with Carfield telling us about a concert that happened on December 2nd last year.

It was great, by the way. There are some videos to give you a flavour of the afternoon, although the sound isn’t great.

2024 is going to be a fun year. The pinnacle of our programme is the weekend of June 7th to 9th when we are joining with Sheffield Socialist Choir and Out Aloud, Sheffield’s LGBT+ choir, to host the Street Choirs Festival 2024. It will be 40 years since the inaugural event, also in Sheffield, that started the Street Choirs movement.

Street Choirs is a huge festival, involving up to 40 choirs. There will be concerts, choirs singing out of doors, a massed sing with hundreds of voices joining together, workshops, friendships new and old. It’s going to be great. But there’s a lot to do to make sure that everyone has the best time. We’re starting to learn songs but the organisation has been under way for months now.

Before that, we’ll be having a Not-very-far-Awayday at Heeley Institute on February 10th, where we can spend a whole day singing together and do something new. Before lockdown we used to have residential weekends away, but this year we decided to stay local, and more affordable, because we want as many people as possible to join in.

Our main aim though, for 2024, is to keep singing every week. To meet together and enjoy the power and thrill of singing with other people. Performing is fun, and it’s the reason some people do music, but it’s not the be-all and end-all for our choir. We’re very happy to welcome singers who like singing in a group but don’t want to perform.