we can all make music

the really meaning thing

Our values and vision

We believe:

Everyone has the desire, need, right and capacity to sing. Singing together can be a joyful experience with profound potential to enhance many individual and community capacities.

Society should actively encourage, facilitate and promote singing among its citizens and their children because:

making music together is the foundation of social connection;
music carries our culture - our memories, stories, identities, values and hopes;
when people lose their music they lose their voice, and often their sense of connection to the society they live in;
when people make music together they transcend the differences that divide; and,
through music we can restore the practices of the everyday arts that fulfil the basic human needs for free and creative expression, connectedness and participation - and music-making is an everyday art that does this, particularly in groups.

Making music together creates a crucible in which people can experience and productively channel the synergy that comes from collaborative effort. It provides an immediate and tangible manifestation of the power and joy of co-operation. It is the creative manifestation of community. It transforms the metaphor of harmony into a real life experience. It is always a creative act, in the moment - a practice of the 'everyday arts' as an integral part of ordinary people's daily lives.

Healthy and creative communities depend on there being regular opportunities for citizens and their children to come together in safe and supportive environments in which mutual respect and validation, co-operative interaction, creative stimulation and joyful outcomes are the normal conditions and result of engagement.

Community music making offers a highly productive context in which these conditions can be realised and where community vitality, capacity, confidence and energy can flourish. It can also create community where there was none and can engage the untrained in instant, positive experience that moves them from being spectators to participants.

We wish:

Our purpose is to assist in the emergence of a widespread singing culture that:

is sustainably embedded in communities;
is consciously focused on strengthening communities;
welcomes all comers;
valorises and respects difference;
nurtures participants;
interacts with and illuminates contemporary experience;
recognises and facilitates creativity; and,
acts co-operatively.

Such a culture is far more likely to be sustainable and authentic if productive capacities are embedded within communities. It follows therefore that the most effective place for leadership to reside is within communities themselves. Ultimately, music is owned by those who make it as it expresses the feelings of its makers. An authentic community music is driven, and sustained, from within.

We look forward to a society in which:

the populace happily walk the streets singing;
public places are regularly filled with people making spontaneous music together;
communities and families naturally express their connectedness through a commonly held repertoire of songs that they regularly sing together;
everyone confidently expresses themselves in song;
public events always begin and end in group singing;
adults and children enjoy and feel confident singing together;
making music is universally recognised for its educational, therapeutic and connecting value;
a song is respected as being as legitimate a way of expressing truth, hope, fear, critique, protest, or love as any of the more rationally based modes;
making music is as prevalent as listening to music; and,
improvising and making new songs is an everyday activity amongst groups of ordinary people.

To be part of this culture would be exciting and wonderful.

we can all make music

the really meaning thing

Our values and vision

We believe:

We wish:

making a sound world together