Festival Forum 2024

Singing is for EVERYONE!

Thursday 24 October, 15:00 – 21:30, Ulster University Magee

FREE SIGN-UP, OPEN TO ALL

Our brand new ‘Festival Forum 2024 – Singing is for EVERYONE!’ event brings together a wide range of practitioners, researchers, organisers, networks and advocates to discuss live issues of diversity, equality and inclusion in choral singing.  This will be a unique gathering, and an opportunity for projects and people from very different backgrounds and cultures to explore shared elements and answers to perceived barriers within their practice, forging new ideas and potential alliances for the future.

The Forum is presented with our project partners Sing Ireland and the LGBTQ+ choral organisation Proud Voices, who are pioneering fresh networks globally and looking to move forward at pace with the idea that singing is for all, through the implementation of a strong equality, diversity and inclusion agenda.

We will look at the significance and impact of LGBTQ+ groups for the choral community and new ideas around the ‘SATB’ choir of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with its implied approach to gender. We will also highlight communities that have come together through migration or have been traditionally left out, such as hearing-impaired singers using signing as a new language of choral performance.

The event will be held at Ulster University, Magee Campus, and chaired by leading composer and Professor of Music at the University, Brian Irvine. The event will include presentations by our partners Sing Ireland and Proud Voices, recent research and live workshops with community choirs and visiting facilitators.

We will close with The Totally Made-up Choir, an entertaining, participative workshop for all comers, led by Brian Irvine, that will bring the threads of the day together in a highly-charged, crazily creative maelstrom of choral fun!

To attend the Festival Forum 2024, please complete the short registration form below.