Love Singing

Love Music is a is a music education and inclusion charity based in Scotland. Like many such ensembles, Love Music’s own 300+ community choir at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh was hit hard by the pandemic and by challenge physical isolation. Creative solutions to the challenges of singing together online and staying connected helped support their community and the success of that first term led to Love Music's Love Singing project.

The aim of Love Singing was to provide a structure to support and engage with the wider community singing sector during difficult times, to share learning and inspire others to take a creative leap of faith. After a national call, five community choirs from across Scotland were chosen to collaborate with five professional songwriters, to meet online, to challenge each other, and to each make a new song that spoke of this moment but also would last.

On Friday (10 December 2021), Love Music launched the five new songs now available for all choirs to access free of charge.

But it wasn't just the choirs being challenged. There is a lack of accessible new music written especially for and with the input of community singers;  the project also wanted to provide opportunities for professional songwriters to develop their skills while writing and arranging for community choir.

Five choirs were involved, with five song writers:

• Stonehouse Male Voice Choir from Lanarkshire, which started as a lunch time sing-along in a builders’ yard, was paired with Penny Stone
• Sing Mor, a homespun singing collective in the West Highlands of Scotland, engaged with social and environmental justice while writing with Debbie Armour
• Freedom Of Mind Community Choir from Falkirk, who sing for the physical, social and emotional benefits that singing can bring, joined with Danish board Hannah Fredsgaard-Jones
• Earnsong, a vibrant and fearless rural singing community in Perthshire joined forces with French-Cameroonian singer songwriter Djana Gabrielle
• Fochabers Community Sing combined with Elm Music Therapy to learn and share signing with Makaton for their song written in collaboration with Zac Scott

The song resources are available on Love Music's website, as are the videos made by each of the choirs.