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PRESS RELEASE: Pink Singers awarded a £94,625 grant by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to archive and celebrate the 40-year history of the choir through their project Sing it Loud, Sing it Queer.

The Pink Singers have received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £94,625 for an exciting heritage project, Sing it Loud, Sing it Queer. Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, over the next year the project will unlock the incredible history of the London-based organisation from its origins in gay liberation to its identity today as the UK’s longest-running LGBTQ+ community choir, turning 40 this year. The project will make the choir’s archive collections more easily accessible and will enable new ways to engage with the Pink Singers’ archive digitally.

Supported through The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Dynamic Collections campaign, the project will enable people to discover LGBTQ+ history from the 1980s to now. It will unlock the many diverse stories of the choir through a new podcast series made in collaboration with Aunt Nell and a short documentary film made with Happenstance Films showcasing a brand new composition to celebrate the anniversary year. Volunteers will also learn new skills in archiving, research and oral history as the choir’s significant archives are prepared for donation to the Bishopsgate Institute, one of the UK’s most prominent archives on LGBTQ+ history.

Formed in 1983, The Pink Singers are Europe’s oldest mixed LGBTQ+ choir, internationally renowned for their music, activism, and close-knit community. Their membership is diverse; with ages ranging from 18 to 70, and representing many sections and experiences of LGBTQ+ life and intersecting identities, with members who come from all walks of life, representing a range of sexualities, gender identities, who are disabled, of colour, and who are parents. 

This project will enable the choir to understand and share its LGBTQ+ community histories now and into the future. The Pink Singers’ history reflects 40 years of change and growth for queer communities in the UK; its choir members have performed on the backbone of Gay Liberation and Women’s Liberation, through the HIV-AIDS crisis, the introduction and eventual repeal of Section 28, the repeal of the ban on serving in the armed forces, the Gender Recognition Act, civil partnership and gay marriage, as well as the ongoing struggle to maintain equality in the modern age and protect the rights of trans people and people of colour. Most recently they have encountered the challenges of supporting each other and bringing the choir successfully through the Covid-19 pandemic. As well as their work in the UK they have also travelled extensively abroad, joining and supporting their LGBTQ+ choral friends in places like India, marching for the repeal of Section 377, and Poland, protesting the LGBTQ+ free zones and war in Ukraine.

Commenting on the award, Chris Scales, the choir’s Archive Manager and Project Chair said: “We are thrilled to have received this support thanks to National Lottery players and are excited that the project will open up LGBTQ+ stories and the significant history of the Pink Singers to a new generation. Despite always being an ‘out and proud’ collective, as a grassroots LGBTQ+ community choir our journey of progress has often taken place under the radar. We are excited to unlock the many hidden stories of the choir and reflect on our place in society and legacy after four decades of activism and queer joy through singing”. 

Notes to editors

About The Pink Singers

The Pink Singers is an LGBT+ community choir based in London. Formed in 1983 for the Lesbian and Gay Pride march, they have grown to become a 100-strong group of amateur singers who come together to sing, perform and campaign for their community. They are made up of talented people representing a diverse range of sexual orientations and gender identities from all walks of life, who are united by a passion for singing great choral music.

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Using money raised by the National Lottery, we inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk. 

Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLotteryHeritageFund  

Since The National Lottery began in 1994, National Lottery players have raised over £43 billion for projects and more than 635,000 grants have been awarded across the UK.

Further information

For further information, images and interviews please contact Laura Owen, Project Manager of ‘Sing it Loud, Sing it Queer’ at laura.owen@pinksingers.co.uk or 07982044679.

The Pink Singers was founded 40 years ago as an inclusive community choir, a space for marginalised people to come together joined by our love of singing and our solidarity. The music we perform has always been a mixture of popular, classical, and political pieces, and our membership has a diverse range of views. We are however united by the continual struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights. Our first ever performance was at the 1983 London Lesbian and Gay Pride march and we have been marching, singing and protesting at Pride ever since. Despite the many gains in rights and freedoms achieved  for LGBTQ+ people in the UK over the four decades we have existed, parts of our community continue to be persecuted, harassed, and legislated against. The fight is not over, and our presence at Pride – which is protest – is more necessary than ever. 

It is with dismay therefore that we witnessed last weekend the arrest of peaceful protesters in London during the Coronation, with some people being arrested merely on the suspicion that they were intending to protest. While this was happening a group of Pinkies were representing us at the Coronation Concert at Windsor Castle, performing as part of its ‘people’s choir’ to represent the diversity of the nation. We were asked to represent LGBTQ+ identities at this international event, and accepted as our founding principles are to be visible, out and proud, and if there is a choir that represents inclusive LGBTQ+ community in the UK, then it is the Pink Singers. But we cannot stand idly by while anti-protest legislation is forced upon us. 

Protest has played, and continues to play, an integral part in the LGBTQ+ community’s fight for our rights. From Stonewall in the US to Section 28 here in the UK, protest has formed the cornerstone of activism and has done much to progress the rights of LGBTQ+ people across the world. The arrests during the coronation weekend set a dangerous precedent regarding the right to protest in the UK that is incompatible with the needs of the LGBTQ+ community.

While these changes affect us all, trans, migrant and racialised communities are disproportionately affected by hostile anti-protest legislation. Any withdrawal of the right to protest follows reasoning that increased state power keeps us safe, even as we know that this is not the case for LGBTQ+ people of colour, LGBTQ+ migrants, and most trans people. The Coronation Choir sang the song ‘Brighter Days’ to reflect rising hope in the UK after the recovery from COVID-19, but with the recent and growing threat of legislative changes against trans people proposed by the UK’s own Equality and Human Rights Commission – widely condemned by UK LGBTQ+ charities, by a representative of the United Nations and reflected in the UK’s ongoing fall in the ILGA Europe LGBTQ+ rights rankings – we may yet see even darker days, and protesting these threats against our community is more important than ever.

In 2021 we took the decision to pause our participation in the Pride in London march while they addressed issues of systemic racism within the organisation. However this pause did not mean we stopped marching, and we have been taking our message of joy, inclusion, solidarity and protest to many other marches including London Trans Pride as well as Kyiv-Warsaw Pride in Poland. Since the events of last weekend the police have expressed ‘regret’ over the protesters’ arrests, but we cannot rest on our laurels. Making music is what we love and what brings us together, but we are also a family – a chosen family – and we need to take care of each other. This year we will be out together marching proud and singing in London, Liverpool, Northampton, Bologna and elsewhere standing up for our family and for what we believe in. We hope to see you there.