Guildhall School research fellow wins grant for choral music project on climate change
World premiere of 'Raise a Voice' by Dr Toby Young will feature as part of an innovative new songbook and associated events that seek to act as a catalyst for discussion and education on the climate emergency.
Guildhall School of Music & Drama is delighted to announce that Dr Toby Young, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Guildhall School, has been awarded a research grant from the Natural Environment Research Council for a community composition project focusing on climate change.
Raise a Voice: A Rebellious Songbook for Our Time is an innovative music-based project that uses choral singing to challenge how we think about climate culture. The project centres around a new 25-minute choral composition for adult and youth choirs to perform together which celebrates the ways that humankind benefits from the natural world, whilst challenging listeners with the reality of what may be lost as a result of climate change. Songs from the songbook will be written in collaboration with environmental researchers and policy makers, and highlight multiple aspects of the climate emergency, with accompanying material such as programme notes and pre-concert talks acting as a catalyst for discussion and education.
By focusing on the accessible practice of choral singing as a means of drawing together communities, the project seeks to foster dialogues around climate change, sustainability, and climate justice that cross boundaries of age, gender and ethnicity; challenge the assumptions we make about which voices to listen to on climate change; help unite communities in solidarity around this topic; and emotionally engage both performers and audiences to think about what we stand to gain through positive eco-action.
Project partners are the City of Bristol Choir, Bristol Youth Choir, poet Jennifer Thorp, Professor Alix Dietzel of the University of Bristol, and Professor James Longhurst of the University of the West of England. The project’s first event, Wonderful World, takes place in Clifton Cathedral, Bristol, on 12 November, featuring the world premiere of Raise a Voice by Dr Young, as well as a number of other songs and choral pieces on the themes of nature and the environment, and speakers from the BBC’s Natural History Unit and the Universities of Bristol and Cardiff. The event coincides with the COP26 Climate Change conference taking place in Glasgow this month.
Dr Toby Young is a member of Guildhall School’s Institute for Social Impact Research in the Performing Arts, which aims to understand and communicate the ways in which performing artists achieve positive impact in society.