Singing Strategy and Events

Sunderland Music Hub’s Singing Strategy puts equal emphasis on wellbeing and progression and provides opportunities for young people of all ages, from their first engagement with singing onwards. Each year’s singing activity is curated thematically, with the activity for the 2019/20 academic year being themed around Wellbeing. 

As a result of conversations with schools, we provide targeted singing interventions in response to need. This may be support to establish or develop a choir, embed technology that supports with singing or creating a singing action plan.

Our annual Singing Festivalprovides opportunities for young people of all ages to develop their singing and perform. Within the Singing Festival there are two projects:

• Infantasia – An opportunity for Key Stage 1 children to perform for the first time. Following school-based workshops with Sunderland Music Hub’s vocal leaders, clusters of schools come together to perform songs they have prepared in front of one another.
• Schools Sing Events– Following singing development activity in schools, young people in both primary and secondary perform together across Sunderland Central, Washington and the Coalfields. Parents and carers are invited to attend the events to see their children’s talent showcased.

As a celebration of the year’s singing activity, we deliver Sunderland Big Sing in July. The Big Sing, hosted at Sunderland Empire, is part-gig, part-show, part-singalong. The theatre is filled with around 1800 children, all singing along to our live band, having spent the year working with their teachers and Sunderland Music Hubs’ vocal leaders to learn the songs.

Our final singing event,City Sings, is a bi-annual school choir competition that has been running in Sunderland for over a decade. At each event, both primary and secondaries compete for a number of categories, including Best Choral Sound and Most Promising Choir. City Sings is a progression route for school choirs who take part in the Singing Festival, with time to develop with support from Sunderland Music Hub to be competition-ready.

Sunderland Singing Intervention and Events are provided free of charge to schools signed up to Sunderland Music Hub’s SLA.