'Sing to Change: Boston to Boston' is a cross-Atlantic climate change collaboration uniting young people with a common goal - to raise awareness of the global climate emergency and encourage people to take action in response. The project also creates a professional musical, cultural and social experience for school children featuring our in-school partners from Chelsea Public Schools and Gardner Pilot Academy.
Project Partners Lincolnshire Music Service, The Come and Sing Company, and Scruffy Bear Media received the award at the 2024 Music Mark Annual Conference in Nottingham on Monday night.
The Music Mark Awards reflect on the achievements of the Music Mark members helping to provide inclusive, accessible, and high-quality music education for young people throughout the UK.
The ‘This Is Not A Rehearsal’ sustainability award focuses on the climate crisis and celebrates the work being done to highlight challenges, react artistically, and lead the way in enacting creative solutions in how music education responds to climate issues.
'Sing to Change: Boston 2 Boston' brought together 1,500 primary school children from Boston (UK) and Boston (USA), encouraging dialogue about climate change and the effect on their futures. The children spent months rehearsing a moving performance of the song ‘Change’ by eco-musician Dane Myers which was then turned into a music video. Darren S Cook and Nicky Hagan of Scruffy Bear Media filmed the project from start to finish as well as interviewing experts and project collaborators to create a film to highlight the message of the project and share it far and wide.
The project created a legacy of high-quality educational and musical resources, including information on climate change for schools to use as part of their curriculum and free scores and arrangements of ‘Change’ for other choirs to use. The aim was to inspire other children and youth choirs from across the globe to continue discussions amongst young people about climate issues and the need for change.
Project Lead, Elenor Bowers-Jolley said, “This project has been an absolute joy to be part of from start to finish and I am thrilled that it has been recognised by Music Mark in this way! And coming alongside being a finalist for ‘Outstanding Musical Initiative’ at the Music and Drama Education Awards and ‘Corporate Cause’ at the Smiley Charity Film Awards, it galvanises us to keep moving forward! This isn’t the end of it for us – we need to continue having these important discussions with our young people, so we are already in the planning phase of Sing to Change 2.0 – watch this space!”
We are incredibly grateful to the participating schools and our team – including key partner, US not-for-profit Sea Us Rise – for their hard work and commitment to the project to make it such a success. Receiving this incredible accolade gives added motivation to continue to push forward with the Sing to Change initiative, and we are more than ready to start the next stage. This time, our focus will be on food scarcity, poverty and biodiversity loss, as well as sustainable agriculture. More news to follow!
Thank you also to the Liberty Mutual Foundation for supporting climate resilience and climate awareness activities for BCC singers for the past two years!
For more information on the project, which is supported by the Arts Council through a National Lottery Project Grant, visit www.singtochange.co.uk
