The programme note that should have been...
/Yesterday was supposed to be Starling 10, our tenth anniversary concert at Cadogan Hall. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the show has been postponed to Saturday April 9th 2022. We don’t know yet quite what that show will look and sound like, but we do know that our programme note will be very different in light of everything that has gone on these past few weeks. So we thought we’d share the programme note that should have had pride of place at the start of the Starling 10 programme, here for all to see.
In the summer of 2009, having recently finished our Masters degrees at the Central School of Speech and Drama, the two of us were contemplating the future. The country was in a recession with funding cuts left, right and centre; if people had a job in the arts, they weren’t leaving it any time soon and if we wanted to stay in London and work in that scene, we’d be fighting each other for what few jobs existed.
Our days studying had sometimes felt isolated and lonely, so we had spent our MA year singing around the piano in our house share, a welcome break from essays, presentations and reading. We’d share stories from our respective childhoods of joyous evenings, weekends and holidays happily filled with music, theatre and community. We lamented that our short time in London hadn’t yet matched those experiences; while we were surrounded by some of the best theatre and music in the country, it was the job of professional creatives to make a lot of it happen. What seemed to be missing were opportunities for people and communities to participate in the arts.
One evening whilst wandering along the Southbank mulling over these thoughts, Emily remembered the old adage that “if it doesn’t exist, create it”. She returned home and asked Anna to set up an arts company with her. Starling Arts was born.
From the off we wanted Starling Arts to provide accessible opportunities for anyone to engage with the arts. We ambitiously launched in January 2010 offering drop-in drama classes for young professionals, an after school musical theatre class for children and a community show choir for adults. The choir was the thing that stuck. Before we knew it we had three choirs and we had found our niche; we were the company that got groups singing.
In addition to our weekly rehearsals with our community choirs Corvida, Forte and The Starling Singers, our work over the last ten years has taken us to schools, hospitals, care homes, workplaces, community groups, hen parties, product launches, weddings, corporate away days, charity events and even a marriage proposal (she said yes!). We’ve also loved seeing the rise of the community choir in that time, with other ensembles across the country casting off their stereotyped shackles and challenging the nature of what a choir can be.
In our own singing community we’ve seen some of our singers become the best of friends, fall in love, have children together, live together, work together and travel together.
We’ve sung all over the UK, toured in France and Belgium, produced 13 concerts, taken our choirs away for residential weekends, raised thousands of pounds for good causes, hosted numerous cabarets, trained community music facilitators, joined other choirs on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, run a youth summer school, sung at festivals, given a TEDx talk about the power of singing, performed in the West End, taught at our alma mater, recorded two albums, and written four musicals, three of which premiered as part of the Starling Arts summer school.
All the way through the thing that has kept us ticking is the people we work with. It’s never just been about training the best performers, but we always believe that everyone performing in a Starling Arts show is giving the best performance they can at that time. Starling 10 showcases just some of the thousands of people we have had the privilege to sing with over the past ten years. All of them have experienced the transformative power of group singing and the joy of being a part of a community. Many of them now have more teal in their lives than they ever thought possible.
Our community connects far beyond its immediate singers to their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours, so it’s to all of you that we say thank you. Thank you for supporting Starling Arts over the years, for watching us perform, for championing our work, for hiring us, for following our adventures online, for buying tickets, and for being here tonight.
It’s been an extraordinary ride. We hope you enjoy the show.
Anna & Emily x
