~ October 2014
In our field of work, professional arts in community and education settings, we hear quite a lot (!) about the importance of building and sustaining partnerships. Yes, yes, all well and good, but its tricky to find the right organisations that believe in the same things, share the same values, and can complement but not duplicate your own skill-set.
We are still a project funded company and, while we have never been short of ambition, we do sometimes get frustrated that our work is not as widely disseminated or its impact as deep as we would like.
Step in the brilliant community singing organisation Big Big Sing, funded in Scotland by the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games cultural programme and across the UK by the Spirit of 2012 Legacy Trust. As well as programming and delivering live workshop events across the UK, we have now been working for a year as consultants, curators, and arrangers of The Big Big Commonwealth Songbook and given responsibility for developing all the ‘community choir friendly’ resources.
Nothing could have prepared us for the fact that through this dynamic new partnership over 60,000 new people have come in contact with our work over the last 10 months. Resources from the Big Big Sing songbook have been downloaded over 26,000 times since the first songs were launched in January 2013, and some of these on very far-flung shores!!
Not bad.
Take a bow Big Big Sing.