Newhaven Community Choir Facilitator/ Leader

About the choir:

Inspired by the Newhaven Fishwives’ Choir of the late 19th Century, Newhaven Community Choir is about celebrating the community of Newhaven and it’s musical heritage. The group is informal and fun. Everyone is welcome, young or old: absolutely no singing ability necessary. The idea to resurrect the Fishwives Choir repertoire was initiated by local charity, Citizen Curator, in 2014. Since then the choir has been singing a mixture of the old songs associated with Newhaven and other community spirited folk songs to bring people together for rehearsals and community events. We have also been involved in songwriting projects and other historical story-telling events. 

We meet on Wednesdays, 7pm – 8:30pm during school term time and are often asked to perform at community events.

The choir is funded entirely by donations from choir members and occasional performance fees.

Role Description:

The Choir Leader guides our weekly singing sessions by helping to create a positive and encouraging community atmosphere for people to sing together. Weekly sessions include a physical and vocal warmup, going over songs from our extensive back catalogue, trying out new songs, preparing for performances and checking in with how everyone’s week has been. The leader may sometimes lead these parts of sessions themselves but they also encourage choir members to take on leading different parts as well. The emphasis is more on community than on music and the leader doesn’t need to worry about preparing written scores or arrangements unless useful for specific pieces. Choir members often just sing whatever harmonies and parts they feel like without much prior planning or arranging. 

At performances the leader is often the person who addresses the audience and helps to encourage people to join the choir, so someone who is a confident public performer/ speaker would be good.

No experience at leading choirs or musical qualifications are necessary. It is much more important for us to have a leader who can support a positive community atmosphere.

The roots of the choir are in folk music, especially music from or about the East Coast of Scotland, so a leader with an interest in this would be ideal.

It is also helpful if the leader is able to play an accompanying instrument such as guitar, ukulele or keyboard.

The choir leader will need to work with choir members to help facilitate group decisions about repertoire, performances and the general direction of the choir so someone with experience in supporting group decision making would be good too.

The role has huge potential to be developed further by someone who has the skills and desire to write funding applications for projects that help the choir engage in community work. There are many ideas within the choir membership for productions and performances that could be developed.

Pay offered: 

• This is a freelance position.
• Fixed fee of £61 for each weekly session (90mins)
• Any additional work with the group will be paid at a rate of £40.50/hr.
• Any additional meetings, admin or preparation work will be paid at £12/hr.

Dates:
We are looking to have someone in place to start next term from Wednesday 28th August 2024 and, after a mutually agreed trial period, we would expect the role to be ongoing as long as finances allow.

Expressing Interest:

If you are interested in the role please email newhavencommunitychoir@gmail.com by 15th July 2024 with a short message to let us know about your experience and why you’d like to take on the role.