How To Go About Setting Up A Choir

Yous've decided that you lot desire to kickoff your very own community choir, and then what'due south the first footstep? Why, planning of course! Before you rush into the fun bit (the singing), yous'll need to take a lot of things into consideration. In fact, it's non until at least Office 6 of this series of posts that you will really do any singing! (unless y'all sing while you plan, which is beauteous)

Concluding week, in Role 1 of How to start your own customs choir, we looked at what the term community choir might actually hateful and I suggested that information technology should be open to all and also involve a sense of customs. With that in mind, we tin can now begin to expect at what is involved in setting up your own community choir.

Notwithstanding, before you lot rush into annihilation you'll need to inquire yourself some catchy questions:

why start a choir now?
what skills do I take for running a community choir?
what practise I want to achieve?
can I exercise it lone, or volition I need aid?
where is the money going to come from?
what type of choir will this be?

i. Why get-go a choir now?

Perhaps you've been pregnant to do this for years and just now have got around to it. Or mayhap you've taken early retirement or the kids have just left dwelling. Whatever you think the reason is, it's worth reflecting on why yous haven't done this before. Is it really the right time? Volition this be a flash in the pan, or are you truly committed to making it work? Do you have to offset a choir now (e.g. you need a way to make money), or is it just going to be a hobby (i.e. you have much less to lose if it doesn't work out)? On a more general level: given the electric current economical climate, volition what is basically a leisure activity for people be able to sustain itself financially?

There is another question that will pop up in a future post when I talk almost finding a location to prepare upwardly your choir: is in that location a need for a choir here and now? You may live in an area which is already saturated with choirs, or there may be such a low density of population that a big enough choir tin can't exist sustained, or even (and I can't imagine this!) a identify where people merely don't want to sing as part of a group. Perhaps this is not the best fourth dimension or identify to exist starting a choir (although I don't want to put you off — honest!).

ii.What skills exercise I have for starting and running a customs choir?

Accept you washed this before? What experience practice you have? In that location is a big difference between singing in a choir and leading ane. How practise you detect out whether you have the necessary skills? Mayhap yous've run a small singing group with v or half dozen people in it; perhaps you've led the subsequently-school singing club; or you might have stood in for the musical director at your local choir one calendar week.

Any of these will requite yous a clue as to whether you have the necessary skills to run a choir. But do you take the right skills? I've spent over 25 years teaching adult groups in the performing arts. Several times I take been asked to run a children's group and each time it has been a disaster! Why? Because the skills I have developed in leading developed groups are very different from those needed to lead a group of children. Similarly, the skills needed to deport a classical piece with an experienced choir of people who tin can all sight read are very dissimilar from those needed to teach a simple African vocal by ear to a group of inexperienced singers.

If you don't have the experience or lack the necessary skills, where tin can you lot become them from? It might be possible to outset out as an assistant in an existing choir (maybe the one you sing in already?). Find a friendly choir leader who is prepared to mentor you and give y'all opportunities to teach songs to their choir now and again. At that place are also training courses and workshops y'all can go along. Some specifically for leading singing groups (conducting, education songs by ear, etc.) and some about setting up and running community groups in full general. Here in the UK there are several organisations that can assist you find such training: Sing for pleasure, Natural Vocalization Practitioners Network, Clan of British Choral Directors, Sound it Out, Sound Sense, TONSIL, British Choirs on the Net, Gerontius, Making Music, ... to name only a few.

3. What do I want to achieve?

There are far easier means of gaining celebrity than standing in front of a choir and waving your arms around! Leading a community choir should not involve your ego too much. Although you will exist the 'leader' in many senses, a community choir only really works if there is a true sense of equality and customs. Your job is to bring out the best in people, to give them a good time, to create a group who piece of work as a team, to make beautiful music together! In an ideal world, the best choral directors are those who are not really noticed. The all-time result (in my book at least), is when a group experience that they've washed it themselves and that I've made myself redundant.

There are many, many reasons for starting a community choir. At i level it doesn't really matter what your reason is, simply it's always a good thought at the outset to take some idea of where you lot might be heading. Will this be a performance choir? Volition yous eventually want to paw over the reins to the choir members? Volition this be a group to assistance people gain singing confidence after which they will exit and go onto other choirs? Volition it merely be a fun session every at present and then for people to drib in to have a skilful sing-vocal? The clearer y'all tin can exist about this at the beginning, the more likely y'all are to have a successful choir.

4. Can I do it lonely, or will I need help?

Do yous have the necessary admin. skills to dorsum upwards the choir? Some people are absolutely fantastically amazingly practiced and charismatic on an artistic level, simply can't go on accounts, mailing list databases or tidy offices. It'south fine to acknowledge that you need help in certain areas, only yous'll have to factor this in: how can y'all find someone reliable to help you? how will y'all manage to pay them?

Ane way of getting help to run a community choir is to set it up as a constituted body with a committee fabricated up of choir members. You volition so have a number of (unpaid) people with clearly divers roles (secretary, treasurer, etc.) who are in that location to help and support you. And perhaps more than chiefly, this volition give your new choir an identity of its own rather than only existence a one-homo or one-woman enterprise. If you decide to go down this route, you can approach existing community choirs that you know who would exist happy to give you a copy of their constitution then you can have something to base your own on. It might as well be a expert idea to go a few interested singers on lath at this stage to class your first commission and aid you become the choir started. It's probably best for these committee members to be potential choir members rather than asking friends and family unit (i.e. information technology's non the aforementioned every bit having a neutral executive board).

You might also decide that you want external help in order to finance the project. Which brings usa on to ...

5. Where is the money going to come from?

Aha — the thorny issue of finance! This will be the subject of next week'due south post.

half-dozen. What type of choir will this exist?

Yes, information technology's going to be a community choir, but what 'flavour'? What kind of people will make up the choir: absolute beginners who haven't sung before? people who think they can't sing? anybody and everybody? experienced singers? Will it be for a item sub-section of the community: immature people, the unemployed, gay men, over 60s, adults with special needs? What kind of music will you exist making: unaccompanied harmony singing (acappella), songs from the shows, world music, barbershop, Western classical music, simple chants and rounds, sacred music?

Maybe ane of the nearly important considerations is whether the choir is going to perform in public or not. This is non something that needs to be stock-still. Some choirs first off as not-performing choirs, but end up doing public concerts. If your choir is for inexperienced singers, or people who don't call up they can 'sing', then it's probably a proficient idea to emphasise that the choir won't be doing public performances. If, however, y'all want to attract more experienced singers, then you lot might want to flag upwards that the choir will be performing regularly (in which case you'll need to do some forward planning and enquiry possible local venues for performances).

It may seem that asking these questions goes against the idea of 'community choir' that I laid out in last calendar week's postal service, i.e. that the choir is open to all. However, every person has unlike needs and different tastes, so a single community can support several 'open to all' choirs, each with a unlike season. 'Open up to all' means that, in principle, you won't exclude anyone from joining you choir. But that also means that people are costless to bring together whatever choir suits them best.

You need to be very articulate from the starting time what kind of choir you are setting up. That is what people are signing up to. If you decide later to change the nature of the choir (eastward.g. by narrowing the repertoire to merely Eastern European songs or by beginning to perform in public), this should only be washed in consultation with the current choir members. It'due south not fair to move the goalposts on a whim without considering who information technology will bear upon.

next week

Next week, in Office 3, I will exist looking at possible means to finance the setting up and running of your community choir: How to offset your own community choir 3 — Finding the money

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