'Sing Every Day' Community Performances
The Pitch
Problem statement
As a charity supporting singing for everyone, we know how many benefits daily singing brings to primary aged children. But according to the Independent Society of Musicians (ISM), "specialist music teacher recruitment has been justifiably described as ‘spiralling out of control’ ... Primary courses with a music specialism have all but disappeared." With very few primary schools employing a specialist music teacher to teach classroom music and lead singing in school, music provision is often left to generalist classroom teachers who have very little training in teaching music and, as a consequence, find delivering music daunting.
Solution
Our 'Sing Every Day' projects focus on schools where there is deprivation. They instil confidence and teamwork into classrooms, to improve learning outcomes, support well-being, and most of all, to bring a sense of joy into lessons. Each project ends with a Community Sing, when the children, teachers, parents and members of the local community gather at the VOCES8 Centre on Gresham Street for a morning to rehearse and perform the music they have learned in school. For many of the children we work with, music is a vital way to connect with their teachers, peers, and the world around them – and sometimes, it’s the only way. The chance to share what they have learned can be life-changing.
Why are we best placed to deliver?
Since our foundation in 2006 we have striven to promote the benefits of singing to our beneficiaries in London and around the UK. We moved to our home in the City in 2013 and have since worked with tens of thousands of children and teachers to create cultures of singing in schools. In 2019, we commissioned the UCL Institute of Education to evaluate our projects. Their conclusions overwhelmingly supported what we already, instinctively, knew: Our projects improve confidence, communication and leadership skills; our projects improve school work; our projects “benefit... children’s overall development”; and our projects help teachers too.
Focus Areas
Delivery plan
Budget breakdown
| Professional musician costs: 3x Community Sing events, with 5 singers at each = 15 singer fees @£200 | £3,000 |
| Staff admin time: 3x Community Sing events @£250 per event | £750 |
| VOCES8 Centre venue cost (full cost recovery basis): 3x projects for 3 hours each @£70ph | £630 |
Beneficiaries
237 people
Who will benefit
Expected impact
The main beneficiaries will be the children who we work with, who will enjoy the benefits of daily whole-class singing including positive effects on their wellbeing, mental health, classroom participation and behaviour - particularly important post-Covid. Their trip to the City provides an important and meaningful experience for pupils and families, and an opportunity for teachers to make cross-curricular links to e.g. St Paul's Cathedral. Teachers will benefit by learning new skills, teaching strategies, and confidence to use their voice. One teacher said: “We have learned that singing together as a group is a great way to relieve stress and enjoy ourselves. It is a fun way to be ourselves and increase our self-confidence without having too much attention focussed on one individual.” Parents, friends and other members of the community will benefit from the joy that our Community Sing events bring, from watching their children perform, and from the ability to participate themselves.
Track record
Previous Sing Every Day projects culminating in Community Sing events, such as the one evaluated by the Institute of Education (IOE) in 2019, have had positive effects: "‘Overall, the implications from the data are that the mentored classroom-based singing activities across two school terms (approximately six months) resulted in improvements in children’s singing (on average), as well as possible benefits in reading and aspects of Executive Function – the latter being closely correlated to changes in the same children’s reading scores.’ ‘….separate qualitative research data suggests that the participant generalist teachers collectively benefited from being mentored by professional singers who drew on an experienced background in working with children and offering school based support….’ This year we are commissioning further research from IOE into the benefits of our projects, and whole-class daily singing in general, on the well-being of younger primary-aged children.