By John Lyon
Director of Music, The Parish of Boston
With the new-look Blenkin Memorial Hall as our hub, we are now able to develop and deliver even more musical opportunities for the community – which is something we have had long aspirations to do for Boston.
As the Parish of Boston’s Director of Music, I am responsible for all of our musical activities. This includes preparing and rehearsing all the music for worship and leading our choirs. In addition, I also oversee our adult education activities and work in the community, which is a crucial part of our outreach and an area that we have been keen to expand. However, the challenge for us has been not having a suitable facility to support this work.
The improvements to the Blenkin Memorial Hall building solve this problem for us, providing us with a flexible space where we can bring people together for practice and performance. Thanks to the refurbishment, we now have a base for our team and somewhere to come together to teach, rehearse, and practice and to provide access to music for local people.
We already have a busy programme of musical activities that we are delivering for the town. Over the last few months, I’ve been working with six primary schools, where 200 children have been working each week to learn ten songs based around a central theme, which they performed together recently at St Botolph’s. The project has been a great experience, and it has been wonderful to see the students engaging with music and singing with such enthusiasm.
We’ve also recently set up a teenage choir – B16. There are 13 members already, and we’re looking for three more teenagers who enjoy singing and challenge to join. This new choir complements our existing parish and community choirs, giving people of all ages the chance to access musical training and perform as a group.
We’ve also held musical classes for adults, including a successful ukulele group, and we’re planning more sessions like these. I want to develop the classes we offer for local people; for instance, we’re planning additional small group music theory and music appreciation classes. We also offer access to musical instruments or voice tuition to our choristers.
Looking forwards, I would like to continue to develop our work with schools. As an experienced secondary school teacher, I know the importance and value of children being able to explore live music. Not only does it inspire children to play music and sing, it also helps to build their confidence. Access to music can be truly transformational for children and, indeed, adults.
The refurbishment of the Blenkin Memorial Hall means that we can develop all of these opportunities and more for the benefit of our local community. And, we’re not keeping the hall all to ourselves – it’s also available for hire by other groups and organisations, making it truly a community resource for everyone.
