Wightlink fundraiser Sunday 8/9/19
By Kay Sumpner (Spinnaker Membership Sec. & Bass)
It was a beautiful Autumnal Sunday morning when Decadence – a sub-group of Spinnaker Chorus – turned up at the ferry terminal in Portsmouth to sing their hearts out for the Children with Cancer UK, aboard the Isle of Wight Ferry St Clare. Children with Cancer UK is Spinnaker’s Charity of the Year for 2019 and as September is Childhood Cancer awareness month, the timing was perfect.
Warming up in the waiting room (quietly) before boarding started the donations rolling in, and so they continued, as the girls went over to the Island and then back and then over again and finally back, singing such favourites as Paper Moon, Bohemian Rhapsody (which drew much applause) and Make Your Own Kind of Music.
Over £260 was received in donations on board and a further £77 from online donations. The girls, led by Karen Harland, are very grateful to Wightlink for allowing them to perform, to their helpers Angela Jerome and Barbie Corstorphine (both Spinnaker members) and also to Jim Kelleher who made everything run smoothly. The girls enjoyed it so much, they are already planning another trip, hopefully at Christmas.
Singing with friends at the Memory Café
By Jo Odell- Spinnaker Chorus Bass and Front Row member
As a singing member of Spinnaker Chorus for the last 11 years I have been looking for ways to contribute more to our community and so when I watched the Dementia choir on the BBC as a registered nurse myself, I had some ideas of how the chorus could involve more people to help them to sing. Through local contacts I found a memory café that runs locally and is supported by a project called “Living well with dementia in the community”
On Wednesday 11th September, 14 chorus members joined me at the café and we helped both people living with dementia and their carers to learn and sing some simple warm up songs and even managed to get people to sing in two rounds. We had some great feedback and everyone seemed to be having fun singing along. We finished our time in the café, by performing “Lets get together again”. We hope to run a singing workshop at the café on a quarterly basis and then see where we progress to.