The Choir with No Name
The Choir with No Name (CWNN) runs choirs for homeless and marginalised people, and delivers singing workshops for people at risk of homelessness.
They run choirs in four major cities, hosting regular choir rehearsals with conversation and a hot meal, as well as performances and other community projects.
The Choir with No Name
Target Beneficiaries
Target beneficiaries are homeless and marginalised people in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Brighton.
The Choir with No Name was founded on the premise that singing makes you feel good; it distracts you from all the nonsense in life and helps you to build confidence, skills and genuine, long lasting friendships.
The choirs provide a safe space where people can express themselves, without being labelled or judged. The choirs aim to help members build their confidence and skills, and make genuine, life long friendships, so that they are then in a better position to tackle the other challenges in their lives, and move away from homelessness long-term. They also aim to reduce the stigma faced by their members in wider society.
The CWNN challenge the convention that arts participation comes at the end of someone’s recovery journey, and endeavour to work with friends in the arts and homelessness sector to demonstrate the importance of creativity within homelessness support, as well as increasing broader artistic opportunities for their members.
Delivery
The CWNN originally consisted of four choirs in Birmingham, Liverpool, London and Brighton (run in partnership with Brighton Housing Trust). A new choir was launched in Cardiff in November 2021 in partnership with The Wallich, along with plans to pilot two new choirs working to a new mixed community model.
Choirs meet once a week where they have a warm drink and a catch up, followed by an hour and a half of singing, and then sit down together afterwards for a hot meal cooked by volunteers. They perform regularly, from local homeless hostels to the Royal Festival Hall and everywhere in between.
The CWNN also deliver community projects for people at risk of homelessness in each of the cities where they work, motivated by a desire to share the joy of singing with as many isolated and marginalised people as possible and as a way of recruiting more choir members.
Almost a year in the making and involving 190 choir members, the CWNN released their single and video, “This is Me” on 10th October 2019, World Homeless Day. Each choir performed the single in the week of release. The accompanying #thisismeinthree campaign challenged the idea that “the homeless” are a homogenous mass of people separate from mainstream society, but instead that choir members are individuals who may be facing tough times, but who have vibrant stories to tell.
Impact
Testimonials
“CWNN is a really important structure to my week. Singing with others helps reduce my anxiety & depression.”
“I know that I am on an ongoing journey of making sense of what has happened to me due to a difficult past, but it is making me human being here [at choir] and hearing others stories. It is helping me love people again.”
“I love the choir as before I came I was lost. I used to drink a lot, but haven't drunk since [joining the choir].”
Acknowledgements
Comic Relief, Octopus Giving, Henry Smith Charity, Arts Council England, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Kobalt, Steve Morgan Foundation, John Ellerman Foundation, CIVITAS Social Housing PLC, Axis Foundation, Evan Cornish Foundation, Jackson Lees Foundation, Liverpool Lord Mayor’s Fund, People’s Postcode Lottery, Garfield Weston, Steve Morgan Foundation, Pret Foundation Trust, ASDA Small Heath, Engine UK LLP, John Lewis Music Society, KPMG LLP, Lakeland, Linklaters LLP, Lyndales Solicitors, Mainstay, Norton Rose Fulbright Charitable Foundation, Penguin Random House, Pico Players, DWF Charitable Foundation, Torus Ltd, TSB Bermondsey, Well Rooted Wholefoods, William Adlington Cadbury Trust , Zurich Community Trust.