Manchester Sings 2024
Withington Girls' School worked with six Maintained Partner Primary Schools on a large-scale musical event held at Manchester Cathedral in November 2024. All schools involved recognise the importance of community and share the same vision and ethos of helping those less fortunate than themselves. The event saw over 200 children joining together to celebrate the positivity of Community through song and poetry.
This Partnership is not a temporary venture as the first Manchester Sings was held in 2019. The Partnership also included work with two of our long-term Partner organisations, The Booth Centre a charity for homeless people in Manchester and Wood Street Mission children's charity, to fundraise for their projects.
Aims
1. To increase engagement and musical appreciation in all pupils.
2. To increase awareness of our shared community and how communities can support each other.
3. To increase self-esteem and wellbeing through involvement in a wider community event.
4. To strengthen relationships between Withington Girls' School and our Maintained Partner Primary schools and other organisations.
Background
Withington’s Junior and Senior School pupils performed alongside children from six Greater Manchester primary schools as a massed choir at Manchester Cathedral on Tuesday 26th November.
Over 200 children from across Manchester performed a repertoire of songs on the chosen theme of ‘The Joy of Music’ and in the warmth of Manchester Cathedral, the choir took the audience on a journey through many different music styles with messages of what music adds to our lives. The songs were chosen to remind us all of the message that music unites us and is an international language.
Dressed in colourful t-shirts, evoking the image of a rainbow, the children performed with great enthusiasm and energy in front of a large audience of family, friends, school senior leaders, teachers, governors and staff, and distinguished guests including the Lord Lieutenant and the High Sheriff of Greater Manchester, the Lord Mayor of Manchester and Manchester Cathedral’s Reverend Canon.
The concert, which has become an annual fixture in the school calendar, is the culmination of an inter-school partnership project known as Manchester Sings. Through this programme, schools from across the region come together under the direction of Withington’s Director of Music. The children at the partnership schools work closely with her over many weeks of rehearsals before the final performance, and it is at the concert itself when the full choir first sing all together.
Performing as part of the Manchester Sings choir were children from Broadfield Primary School (Oldham), Old Moat Primary School (Withington), St Kentigern’s RC Primary School (Fallowfield), St Luke’s C of E Primary School (Bury), West Didsbury C of E Primary School, Whitefield Community Primary School (Whitefield) and Withington Girls’ School.
This was the fifth year Manchester Sings has taken place following the project launch in 2019. It was established to give the opportunity for children and young people from across Greater Manchester to come together to celebrate music and the power of song.
Another key aspect to the project is the creative writing activity. The children have the opportunity to write poems inspired by the theme. Some were chosen to feature in the programme and several were read by their authors during the event.
Manchester Sings once again acted as a fundraising event for The Booth Centre and Wood
Street Mission and was very kindly sponsored by Beaverbrooks the Jewellers.
