About our Community Projects

Penzance East Sing Up

Project working with local community musicians, school children and world musicians to promote singing for pleasure.

Through Penwith Extended Schools network, local school children are using world music as a vehicle to develop their love of singing. The project is working through a team of six community musicians, each with a particular strength in world music and/or vocal technique, to support teachers and key parents/carers in developing singing sessions before or after school. Through the project, the children will learn more about other cultures, meet visiting world musicians through day-long workshops at Humphry Davy Specialist Music School, and make friends with children from other primaries who will be with them in their new secondary schools next year.

The project will be celebrating its progress through live performances, recording a CD of their songs, and creating a website as an ongoing resource for other local singing groups. We have also taken a group of children from the project schools up to London for a musical trip that included a day at John Scurr School in Tower Hamlets to join their children in singing, a night at a West End musical, and a visit to the Science Museum. We hope to create a twinning friendship  with the London school that will see some of their children spend time with us in Cornwall, enjoying our music and culture, for the Golowan Festival next summer.

Children from Penzance East singing with the children of John Scurr School, Tower Hamlets

Penzance Festival of Song 15th March 2010

Celebrating song from every genre, every age, every one..

We felt that the Sing Up project (see above) was so successful that we should build on it to include singers of all ages and backgrounds in a week of singing in our town, Penzance. With a menu of performances, workshops, and events, we hope that everyone will have the chance to take part, as singer or audience, in a celebration of song.

Already, plans are being drawn up for singing squads in the centre of town, for a singing picnic in Penlee Park, and for an evening of children's singing from local schools. We would like to involve the male voice choirs, the choral groups, the community choirs, the buskers, the karaoke kings and queens,  the bedroom divas who haven't yet performed out there...if you're interested to take part, or to attend, please get in touch for information, or call Amanda Pickering on 01736 352151.