St George’s Way
A popular wellbeing project which focuses on singing has celebrated 2 milestone birthdays over the last few weeks, including its tenth anniversary.
Over the last ten years, the Independent Arts project ‘SingAbout’ has helped improve health and wellbeing and reduced loneliness and isolation through the weekly singing groups. Pre-Covid 19 there were SingAbout groups running across the Island, reaching over 600 people from across the Island in the last ten years.
The groups released their own bid for Christmas number one in 2016, which featured on the BBC’s The One Show.
Since the Covid-19 lockdowns took hold, face to face sessions have been closed, but sessions moved on to Zoom and the singers celebrated their first year of virtual SingAbout with an afternoon of singing some favourite party hits.
Community Engagement Manager, Hannah Griffiths, said:
“SingAbout has been a lovely project to be involved with. We have a dedicated and talented team of practitioners who really care about their work and the group participants. All the groups have formed close connections and we do talk about them as the SingAbout Family.
“The wonderful thing is that SingAbout is open to everyone, it’s about singing because of the joy of it, not because you’re good at it, which makes it really inclusive.”
The group have chosen all the music for the last year, including everything from songs from Les Miserables to The Proclaimers and much more in between. Every session ends with a version of Dame Vera Lynn’s war-time classic, ‘We’ll Meet Again’.
Amy Normanton, a virtual SingAbout practitioner, added:
“It’s been wonderful to see the virtual group thrive and grow into a really supportive community all looking out for each other and looking forward to meeting each week.”
Independent Arts are hoping to restart face to face sessions in the summer if government guidelines allow.
To join virtual SingAbout or get information on any of Independent Arts projects please call 01983 822437 or email [email protected]
