When you’re leading a one-off singing workshop, or have large influx of new members to your choir, there will be lots of people who don’t know each other.
Here are a few simple ways to mix people up so there’s less chance of things becoming cliquey.
mixing people up
Whenever I lead a singing workshop, I always mix people up before the warm-up.
I ask singers to stand in a circle in a particular order, then introduce themselves to the people either side of them if they don’t already know them.
This means that complete newcomers will know at least two people straight away.
Part-way through the warm-up, I’ll often mix everybody up again. By the end, most singers will have met four new people.
Here are some ideas for ordering people in a circle:
- Birthday order: January through to December
- Numerical order: house number, shoe size, age (a bit sensitive!)
- Alphabetical order: first name, birthplace, first school, and so on
- Height order (approximately!)
Once singers are in position, you can teach a simple harmony song from where they’re standing. Singers choose whichever part suits them. Later on, you can return to a previous ordering and sing the song again from those positions. This is great for ear training.
dividing into smaller groups
Sometimes you’ll want to split a large group into smaller groups.
For example, if you need three groups, ask singers to choose one of three things (paper, rock or scissors, for example). They then find everybody else who chose the same thing.
It’s a simple way to get people mingling. The groups probably won’t be exactly equal in size, but you can make adjustments later if need be.
You might also want to create lots of small groups of four or five singers.
Choose a theme (colours, fish, countries, etc.) and give each singer a slip of paper with one item from that theme. If you’re making groups of four using fish, for example, you might use mackerel, pilchard, herring and sardine.
The singers then have to find a group containing one of each fish.
Again, it gets people moving around, talking to each other, and mixing with singers they might not otherwise meet.
Chris Rowbury
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