Our CEO Barbara Eifler attended the third Male Voice Choir conference organised by Peterborough Sings!
Peterborough Sings!, a Making Music member, runs three choirs in Peterborough and is involved with much more: from the singing strategy of the local music hub, to organising a choir festival and commissioning research into male voice choirs.
Some of the issues male voice choirs wrestle with will be familiar to all Making Music members: recruiting new participants, how to be accessible to everyone in their community, how to be financially sustainable and where to find volunteers for their committees.
On recruitment, Peterborough Sings! have developed a project-based approach, tried and tested with a number of male voice choirs, but applicable to other kinds of music groups. They set up a time-limited project culminating in a public performance which combines singing with fundraising for a specified charity. Of the many new singers flocking to such a project, the organising choir is usually able to retain some as long-term participants. Their toolkit is available free to Making Music members.
Peterborough Male Voice Choir 2025 conference
Back to the conference: project-based recruitment is but one of the ways in which Will Prideaux, Director of Peterborough Sings!, is working to revitalise the endangered species of the male voice choir. Another way is through these conferences, a unique opportunity for choirs to connect to each other and find ways of adapting to an environment very different in terms of people’s work and leisure patterns than the world in which many of them were founded 50, 70 or more years ago.
And so, I contributed by addressing this February’s conference on recruiting volunteers for your committee, a universal challenge for music groups, as our 2022 Big Survey revealed.
Committee members age brackets
16-24 6% 25-44 19% 45-64 37% 65+ 38% Are the volunteers in your group (including those on the comittee)
Members or participants in the group 47% Family or friends of members or participants 45% Unconnected to members or participants 5% Don't know or not applicable 2%
69% of groups said they find it hard to recruit new trustees or committee members. 21% find it easy. 10% commented that it depended on the role, usually required some persuasion, or a direct approach, and that many committee members continued in their roles for a long time.
18% of Making Music members rely on musical volunteers (musical leader; accompanists, soloists); 42% rely on volunteers for their events, e.g. ushers, refreshments, box office etc.; 33% rely on a range of volunteers in specific roles, e.g. librarian, 'welcomer' at rehearsals, teamaker, fundraiser, cake sale organiser...; 6% do not have any volunteers other than the committee.
The conference filled me with optimism: 32 choirs (and several representatives of each, altogether 80+ people) coming together – in their ‘spare’ time –, committed to the organisational development of their choirs, when actually what they’d probably ‘just’ like to do is sing!
Hats off to them – and the many, many of you like them – working away at the non-musical stuff, in order to continue bringing the joy of singing, or playing, to participants and audiences all over the UK. And hats off to Peterborough Sings! for doggedly, passionately, knowledgeably, supporting and believing in the value, the fun, the musicality of these choirs – an ethos that chimes with that of Making Music.
Read the full case study on the Peterborough Sings! Toolkit on our resource page. For further information about their toolkit and extra resources for choirs visit the Peterborough Sings! website.
