What I’ve learnt from 20 years of creating scratch choirs

Twenty years ago, Warwick Folk Festival asked me to create a community choir as part of its education outreach programme.

Singing Safari, Warwick 2007

I was reluctant to use the word “choir” because I thought it might put some people off. So I used a thesaurus and came up with “Singing Safari”. This is the story of that project.

How to build a choir from scratch in under an hour

I was recently asked by BBC Radio Suffolk to create a choir from scratch to perform in a concert in aid of Children in Need: The Big Night Out Community Choir.



60 strangers gathered in a church hall and after just three hours we had a choir with three songs in four-part harmony (plus dance moves!) ready for public performance. How did we achieve that so quickly?