Who we are
Led by musical director Emer Mckay, Sheffield One World Choir came out of an idea to develop a choir for people seeking asylum and refugees to come together with other local people to sing. We started early in 2018 with just a handful of singers, and thankfully we grew into a vibrant and welcoming community choir. We meet weekly at The Central United Reform Church, Sheffield city centre.
Everyone in choir finds it a fun and life enhancing experience. We all gain from the therapeutic experience of singing in harmony together, and being part of a warm, mutually supportive and respectful group. With people from many different countries, we want our songs to reflect that rich cultural diversity, and so we encourage choir members to compose and suggest songs for us to learn. So far, we have a repertoire that includes songs in Swahili, Shona, Persian, Xhosa, Ndebele, Yoruba, Zulu, Arabic, Kurdish and English, and increasingly the songs have been written by refugee and asylum seeker members themselves.
Members of the choir often refer to it as a family, where everyone feels welcome, saying how the choir lifts their spirits, and how they love to perform. We aim to continue to build the choir as an ongoing community.
Frequent public concerts are an important feature of the choir, from Migration Matters, Tramlines Fringe and Spirit of Africa festivals, to the Yorkshire Migration Festival and recently at the Octagon Sheffield.
Our aims
Sheffield One World Choir was set up to achieve positive social change through the development of a welcoming and vibrant community choir, primarily for asylum seekers and refugees in Sheffield.
Our aims are:
- To offer a life-enhancing and sociable choir within Sheffield, primarily for asylum seekers and refugees, but also including other people living in Sheffield.
- To break down barriers between people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds through singing
- To be accessible to people who are isolated in their homes, and with little or no singing experience
- To enable people to develop their self-esteem, confidence, new friendships and musical skills through singing.
- To inspire others, through performing at local community events and to enhance local cultural life.
- To provide isolated or vulnerable people with a mutual support network
- To promote cultural awareness and mutual understanding through sharing songs from group members’ countries or cultures
- To be based in Sheffield and easily accessible to the diverse communities of the area
- To link up with and work in partnership with other like-minded choirs and organisations in the locality for mutual support.
A short film about the choir on the BBC in 2023