2020 has become the year that the world turned upside down. It’s become the year where life has been put on the hold and as a society, people’s mental health has been challenged beyond anything we’ve had to face before. 

For community choirs like ours, the greatest challenge of all was knowing that the joy of singing together as a group in a rehearsal or performance had been postponed indefinitely. This was devastating and affected the mental health of choir members of all ages, many of whom, choir was the highlight of their week.

Technology like Zoom saved the social side of choirs but couldn’t replicate the sheer joy of singing together as each member needs to be muted when singing as a group. I’m sure that this has been the most devastating part of the any choir’s journey. 

So with rehearsals being cancelled, performances being cancelled, theatres being shut down with singing being restricted to the confines of homes up and down the country choir members, including our gorgeous kids choir, felt this greatly. 

However, not everything was cancelled!

Hope was not cancelled! Friendship was not cancelled! Creativity was not cancelled but instead channelled into new ways of making this virtual choir work as our new normal.

We wanted to create a video with hope being at its centre. We know that lockdown has been hard for everybody and not seeing grandparents, family members and friends has deeply impacted children across the country.  We recognise that anxiety will likely be high this week with children going back to school, many for the first time since the start of lockdown. 

We hope this video will bring a smile to the faces of children and adults alike and that we can raise a lot of money for MIND, the mental health charity that does such an amazing job. Please donate what you can. Thank you so much. 

To see our video, please go to: https://youtu.be/cNzsQxL_OCo