The Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts: Community Arts Events, Inclusivity, and Social Change

Fiona Crouch

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Introduction

Figure 1: A photograph, taken by the author, of the exterior of Cheltenham Town Hall. The Town Hall is an early Edwardian assembly room. It is built in a classical style using sand-coloured stone and abuts a main road. In the picture, there are blue skies. People can be seen on the entrance steps.

Cheltenham is a festival town, with strong cultural and creative sectors. The literature, science, music, and jazz festivals are all well established and renowned. Additional independent festivals include the poetry, paint, and film festivals. Less well known beyond the town is the annual Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts (CFPA), the only Cheltenham festival that is entirely volunteer-run. It is held annually, in May, at the historic Town Hall.

CFPA has three categories: music, speech and drama, and dance. Most of the classes are competitive, with individual performers or groups competing to be placed. This piece considers the 2023 Community Choirs class, which was non-competitive. Choirs receive feedback from the adjudicator to enable them to improve future performances. Among the 2023 entrants were Belmont School (a special educational needs school), Maggie’s cancer care charity, and the Innsworth Military Wives Choir, in addition to several local community choirs.

Choir singing is a popular community arts event. The Big Choral Census estimates there are over 40,000 choirs with approximately 2.4 million people regularly singing in these choirs across the UK (Le Marquand-Brown and Caunt). Yet research is limited and tends to focus on the potential benefits of singing on individual and collective wellbeing and health. It rarely considers the benefits of performing in public. When performance is considered, research often focuses on professional performers. My research aims to redress this imbalance and introduce the impact of performing on hobbyist singers.

Methodology

I am a CFPA volunteer and have long intended to consider the Community Choir class’s wider impact. At the 2023 event, I was embedded as a researcher, with no volunteer responsibilities. My affiliation to CFPA meant I could emotionally, socially, and physically navigate the performance space, backstage, and front-of-house areas. This enabled me to collect wide-ranging points of view from choir singers, choir leaders, audience members, and volunteers, without needing support.

My research work often follows a messy ethnographic approach that focuses on the sensory interactions of collaborators. I decided to apply the same methodology to my observations during the CFPA Community Choir class. I acknowledge that the approach is subjective: my observations were informed by my connection, however transitory, with the people with whom I communicated and the spaces we navigated together.

People connect to others and to their environment through sensory interactions. Western understandings of the senses have long been dominated by the ocular. More recently, definitions of the senses have expanded to include more than seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. The vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive senses present exciting opportunities to explore connections to people, places, and events. The vestibular sense relates to balance and spatial orientation. Proprioception, sometimes known as the kinaesthetic sense, is associated with the way a person senses movement, action, and their location. Interoception is linked to emotional regulation and how a person makes meaning of the internal signals they receive from all organs and systems of their body. For some individuals—for example, those who are neurodivergent or have additional needs—these can be markedly different from those considered to be neurotypical.

I have taken inspiration from Paola Jiron, who advocates ‘becoming la sombra/the shadow’ when conducting ethnographic research with others (36). This involves experiencing, as much as possible, what the individuals being observed also experience from a physical and sensory perspective. I recorded my observations and the interactions I experienced as written notes. I also include a sketch diagram of these interactions to demonstrate their complexity, annotating the form these interactions took (Figure 4). While this diagram cannot cover the myriad interactions that occurred between individuals, I hope that it provides an insight into the sensory experiences of people who were present. My observations are further supported by photographs I took during the event: these situate some of my observations and provide context.

Notes from the Day

I arrive at the venue and enter the Main Hall. It is both an awe-inspiring and intimidating space that is used by professional performers, seating up to 900 people. The Community Choir class is one of the most well-attended events in the Festival’s schedule, with the Main Hall being near to capacity. 

Figure 2: A photograph of the Main Hall stage, taken from the audience seating. There is a large stage draped with a red velvet curtain. Between the stage and the empty seating is the adjudicators’ dais, also empty. The walls and ceiling are decorated in a classical style, mostly blue and cream, picked out with red. There are also plaster decorations, columns, and statues. Temporary stage wings have been created by black curtains.

The choirs perform on a raised stage. The adjudicators also sit on a raised platform. When performing, the choirs and the adjudicators are higher than most people in the room (audience, waiting choirs, and volunteers). While they are performing, the choirs are raised above everyone except the adjudicators and the balcony audience. This may affect the proprioception and vestibular senses: does this engender feelings that they are more important than the people physically lower than them? I wonder whether they are emotionally ‘raised’ by their physical position. There is a lift to help individuals with limited mobility and/or vision to access the stage. Throughout the morning, the lift is used by at least two of the choirs. This is one example of inclusion; the venue is removing physical barriers to participation.

The choirs perform both a capella and piano-accompanied pieces; both formats present different challenges to non-professional singers and their choir leaders. Each choir was asked to perform two pieces, totalling eight minutes. When they perform piano-accompanied pieces, they are joined by a pianist onstage. Prior to the event, not all the choirs had rehearsed with a pianist, presenting another sensory challenge for participants.

Figure 3: A photograph taken from the performers’ viewpoint in the Main Hall. The walls and ceiling are decorated in a classical style, as in figure 2. The audience seats are mostly empty: they are gold-framed, black-cushioned flip-up chairs. There is a small group of people stood by the adjudicators’ dais. They are a mixture of choir performers and audience members. In the background, the Main Hall balcony level can be seen.

On arrival, the Main Hall is already full of choirs and non-performing audience members. Choirs are standing or sitting together, wearing matching T-shirts or scarves that identify each team—each choir has a strong identity. I write in my notes: ‘I feel happy. The buzz in the room is incredible’. Children are excited when they see family members in the audience waiting to perform. We are all using our senses to make meaning of our environment: mostly sight, hearing, and interoception.

Figure 4: A diagrammatic sketch of Main Hall interactions. The author has hand-drawn, in black ink, the interactions she experienced throughout the event. At the top of the page, arrows connect boxes denoting the stage choir and choir director with the pianist. These arrows and boxes flow downwards: from the stage activity to the adjudicator, to the choirs pre- and post-performance, and down to sections of the audience, with volunteers on the right-hand side. The arrows are labelled with the sensory interactions between these groups and their activities: listen, see, and move. The author often uses diagrams to explore and clarify her thoughts.

Most choirs state their inclusive approach during their introduction. Word of Mouth and The Cheltenham Singing Groups explain that they do not audition potential members. The latter specify that they do not include solo sections in their repertoire. Song choices often reflect the concerns or interests of the choirs. Some pieces are based around concerns for the environment; others feature themes of togetherness and community. These themes signal aspirations to transform their world.

The Whaddon Road Lights Choir is one of the first choirs to perform. The choir leader offers the following introduction: ‘We are a congregation of people of different nationalities and ages’. Demographically, the choir is very mixed, ranging in age from children to adults. I realise this is an opportunity for choirs whose membership is drawn from disparate demographic groups to come together. Not only does this create new and stronger communities, but also aligns with Caroline Beauregard et al.’s assertion that community arts can connect groups who would not have otherwise come together (437).

During her introduction, the Belmont School choir leader tells us this is the choir’s biggest performance. She says they are ‘a sing and sign choir; this is how some of the children communicate’. Through their performance, they share their sensory world with us. The audience must expand the use of their senses to access the performance: we look more closely and use interoception.

The choir leader continues by saying that, for many of her choir members, even getting onto the stage will be a victory. The thought of performing is potentially overwhelming for some choir members, due to the sensory challenges they anticipate experiencing. Despite the choir leader’s concerns that some of the children and young people would not be able to stay onstage for the whole performance, they all do. They are accompanied by a piano—something else they are not used to. The adjudicator comments that singing with a piano changes the performers’ ‘sound world’. Sensorially, these are new experiences for this choir, affecting their aural, proprioceptive, and interoceptive senses, and heightening their achievement still further.

It is the first time the Innsworth Military Wives Choir has performed at CFPA. Before their performance, I interact with some of the choir members. One woman’s daughters have competed in other classes. She is nervous, and tells me, ‘I now know how my daughters feel performing here’. She has realised just how big the performance space is and is now taking in the size of the audience. This is a shared experience both between her fellow choir members and with her daughters, and is one example of the way that the event initiates empathy with others. Before the choir heads onstage, I wish them good luck. A choir member turns to me and says: ‘We’re awesome anyway’. Her use of the pronoun ‘we’ demonstrates the inclusivity of their choir; she is privileging the team identity over her individual identity.

Onstage, the choir leader states that there are over 70 military wives’ choirs around the world. This choir is multinational, and, for several members, English is not their first language. At Innsworth, the choir forms a community, but it is also part of a wider global community of military wives’ choirs. The audience laughs in solidarity as the choir leader says: ‘We share cake, offer support, chat a lot, and sing a bit’. The audience feels included.

Backstage, participants eulogise the event and what it means to them. I am told that it is ‘an incredible event—it gives us a platform and a focus. We get to celebrate what we have achieved; it is valuable that all levels of performance are celebrated’. Again, this person’s use of ‘we’ is significant. Their performance signals the achievement of not just their choir but all participating choirs. One participant tells me that their choir ‘feels like family’: it is an inclusive activity. Another choir member tells me that ‘singing glues us together, especially after the pandemic. It is important to come together and sing together again’.

For other choirs, the benefits of performing in the event are more practical as they ‘don’t need to hire a venue to perform’. Someone from the Maggie’s choir tells me that while she was performing, ‘for one moment, I forgot everything other than being in the moment’. This theme is repeated by another participant who claims that ‘singing should be prescribed on the NHS. It’s helped me to forget the last four years.’ I am told: ‘It’s a coming together of the creative community’. For me, this is a powerful statement; this participant was referring to multiple communities—their choir, and all the other participating choirs—joining together to forge one inclusive community.

Reflection

CFPA is typical of many community arts events, in that it brings together diverse individuals and groups. Michael Murray summarises that these events ‘can promote a sense of shared identity and a way of developing a shared history’ (260). The notion of sharing is implicit within Arts Council England’s definition of inclusivity as the creation of ‘safe, welcoming and equitable environments; where everyone is valued no matter their background, identity or circumstances’. I believe these characteristics are encapsulated by the CFPA Community Choir class, both through structural access provisions such as lifts and ramps, and through the social and emotional experiences of participants. These forms of engagement are clear in my observations and the comments of those with whom I interacted.

While CFPA may not be positioned to effect widespread social change, I want to suggest that the event does produce interpersonal benefits. According to Ashakant Nimbark, ‘[s]ome refer to social change as a radical and revolutionary transformation on a worldwide basis, but others use the same term to describe small-scale temporary modification in the behavior of a few people’ (515). Discussing choirs set up for homeless men, Betty Bailey and Jane Davidson contend that they become ‘a vehicle of empowerment, and the members become spokespersons for the marginalized’ (297). Choirs in the CFPA Community Choir class had similar effects. For example, the Innsworth Military Wives Choir became spokespersons for the local military community, and the Belmont School choir were advocates for individuals with additional needs, which inspired me to learn Makaton. Each choir was empowered, performing and projecting their collective identity to the audience.

Although the interactions were fleeting, these sensorial connections were impactful and continue to endure. Earlier in this piece, I commented on how song choices demonstrated the choirs’ concerns and interests. One choir performed ‘Rule the World’ by Take That. A song lyric stays with me: ‘[I]f you stay by my side, we can rule the world’. This succinctly captures the potential of community arts events to be inclusive and bring about social change.

Works Cited

Bailey, Betty A., and Jane W. Davidson. ‘Effects of Group Singing and Performance for Marginalized and Middle-Class Singers’. Psychology of Music, vol. 33, no. 3, July 2005, pp. 269-303, https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735605053734.

Beauregard, Caroline, et al. ‘Building Communities in Tense Times: Fostering Connectedness between Cultures and Generations through Community Arts’. American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 65, no. 3-4, 2020, pp. 437-54. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12411.

Arts Council England. ‘Essential Read: Inclusivity & Relevance’. Arts Council England, 14 March 2021, www.artscouncil.org.uk/blog/essential-read-inclusivity-relevance.

Jiron, Paola. ‘On Becoming “La Sombra/the Shadow”’. Mobile Methods, edited by Monika Büscher, John Urry, and Katian Witchger, Routledge, 2010, pp. 35-53.

Le Marquand-Brown, Abigail, and Elanor Caunt. ‘An Insight into Choral Singing in the UK [Infographic]’. OUPblog, 29 September 2017, blog.oup.com/2017/09/choral-singing-uk-infographic/.

Murray, Michael. ‘Art, Social Action and Social Change’. Community Psychology and the Socio-Economics of Mental Distress: International Perspectives, edited by Carl Walker, Katherine Johnson, and Liz Cunningham, Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. 253-66.

Nimbark, Ashakant. ‘Social Change: Macro-, Micro-, and Medium’. Contemporary Sociology, vol. 15, no. 4, 1986, pp. 515-19, https://doi.org/10.2307/2069250.