| SingawayE17 |
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Spreading our wings beyond E17, all are welcome to join us in songs of rage, hope, and even humour, at the horrors of war, division and injustice in the world.
Saturday 4th March 2017What? Learn songs to sing, and join choirs from
all over the country singing for the NHS When? Saturday 4th March : 9.30- 11am Workshop 11.30 am Meet Walthamstow Central (top of the escalators) 12 noon - 5pm March & Rally Where? Workshop at 46 Milton Road E174SR March assembles Tavistock Square (Euston or Russell Square Tube) March to Parliament Square |
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Who? Anyone, any age, who wants to sing, shout, wave a banner or just come along with us. Join us at
the workshop or travel with us from Walthamstow
How? We'll learn songs to sing along with combined
Campaign Choirs, many of them with new lyrics
to familiar tunes. We'll have songsheets for
anyone joining us later in the day.
Why? To demonstrate our faith in a NHS worth
fighting for. Check out this video and this one.
the workshop or travel with us from Walthamstow
How? We'll learn songs to sing along with combined
Campaign Choirs, many of them with new lyrics
to familiar tunes. We'll have songsheets for
anyone joining us later in the day.
Why? To demonstrate our faith in a NHS worth
fighting for. Check out this video and this one.
On Saturday 21st Jan uary 2017 - the first day of Trump's Presidency
we rose up in solidarity with Women's marches in Washington DC and round the world. We were among around 100,000 women and men as we sang with Raised Voices and others about diversity, equality, human rights, respect and justice, about welcoming asylum seekers and refugees, and about building bridges, not walls. Here's a clip |
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Rise Up and Protest against the Arms Trade 23rd April 2016 once again we joined East London Against the Arms Fair (ELAAF) to protest at the Excel Centre's support for the Arms Trade. It was the day when runners came from all over the country to register at the Excel Centre for the London marathon. We handed out leaflets
and gathered signatures for a petition to the organisers asking them to put an end to this profiteering from genocide. See January, below, for more details.
and gathered signatures for a petition to the organisers asking them to put an end to this profiteering from genocide. See January, below, for more details.
Rise Up Singing on Saturday 27th February 2016
We joined campaign choirs from all over the UK to sing together on the Stop Trident
CND demonstration against renewing nuclear weapons . Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square to say No to government plans to buy a new Trident system at a cost of over £100 billion. These are weapons of mass destruction that can kill millions. They don't keep us safe and they divert resources from essential spending.
CND demonstration against renewing nuclear weapons . Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square to say No to government plans to buy a new Trident system at a cost of over £100 billion. These are weapons of mass destruction that can kill millions. They don't keep us safe and they divert resources from essential spending.
Protest against the arms fair January 2016
On 16th January 2016, we joined East London Against the Arms Fair (ELAAF) in their musical protest at The ExCel Centre. Every 2 years, since 2001, London’s ExCel Centre has hosted the world’s largest arms fair, where weapons, tanks, missiles and torture equipment are sold to regimes that oppress their own people and/or attack their neighbours. ELAAF has been campaigning tirelessly to inform people attending other events at this venue and ask them to put pressure on the owners to stop hosting arms fairs. Singers and non-singers are always welcome at their monthly protest (see ELAAF web site for details). Together with the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, and Stop the Arms Fair we want to put an end to Britain's profiteering from this whole deadly business. “War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it” (George Orwell).
Singing for Climate Action
We ("Leve-toi en chantant") went to Paris on 11th December 2015 with Andrea Encinas and we sang with Welsh and French singers at the Climate Action Zone (ZAC) in Northern Paris. On Saturday 12th we joined the 15,000 demonstrators brought together by 350.org , to draw the Red Lines which must not be crossed in a commitment to achieving sustainable climate targets. People joined in as they passed, and you can catch a few of us singing (about 6 minutes in), in this report from the Baltimore Real News channel. That evening we were joined in song by over 50 Friends of the Earth activists at the Generator Hostel. Click here to download our Paris Songbook
The Rise Up Singing workshop on Saturday 5th December focused on songs to sing in Paris on 11th/12th December, at the end of the Climate Summit including this Sami yoik - an indigenous form of music from the arctic circle! Download sheet music for the yoik here. On Sunday 29th November, we joined campaign choirs from all around the country to sing as one Big Choir with a shared songsheet. You can download this, and sound recordings/links from Raised Voices Choir website, where you can also find a map showing the route of the march and where we'll be singing. Some of us also joined a 'flash mob' at St Pancras Station from 7pm on Monday 30th November. You can find a link to notation and sound files for the song we sang at the bottom of the Paris Can You hear Us flyer.
The Rise Up Singing workshop on Saturday 5th December focused on songs to sing in Paris on 11th/12th December, at the end of the Climate Summit including this Sami yoik - an indigenous form of music from the arctic circle! Download sheet music for the yoik here. On Sunday 29th November, we joined campaign choirs from all around the country to sing as one Big Choir with a shared songsheet. You can download this, and sound recordings/links from Raised Voices Choir website, where you can also find a map showing the route of the march and where we'll be singing. Some of us also joined a 'flash mob' at St Pancras Station from 7pm on Monday 30th November. You can find a link to notation and sound files for the song we sang at the bottom of the Paris Can You hear Us flyer.
3rd October 2015
This is a weekend for musicians and music-lovers to support those hit by the politics of austerity. We'll collect donations of food and/or cash for Eat or Heat and Christian Kitchen. We'll take these along to The Warrant Officer in the evening, where we'll be leading a Protest Singalong, between the acts, who will all be playing free for the same cause. If you can't get to the workshop in the morning, you're welcome to join us there.
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5th September 2015
The workshop on 5th September focused on songs of peace and plenty, and some of us joined the Protests Against the Arms fair during the week leading up to a mass day of action on Saturday 12th September, the day before the arms fair was due to start at the Excel Centre on 13th September. These protests are organised by East London Against the Arms Fair, by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and by Stop the Arms Fair
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Singing for our lives - August 2015 Ian Maclean, Cathy Maguire and Julia Clarke ran daily workshops at The Green Gathering in Chepstow, South Wales from Thursday 13th - Sunday 16th August to sing about sharing the earth’s resources, about peace and about uniting to celebrate diversity. Cathy and Julia have been singing at peace camps, vigils and demonstrations over the past 50 years. Ian has been playing guitar for even longer and helped with chords and keeping the rhythms going. We were joined at the workshop by some wonderful musicians, including Chloe's twin daughters with their recorders and MatiJo Beams, who has brought her experience of leading choirs in Australia to help us with Rise Up Singing. You can download the songbooks from these workshops if you click on the links below:
Women Rising: songs and scary sounds from Greenham Common. All genders welcome! One World: songs from protest and ecology movements around the world Peace and Plenty: songs against war, nuclear weapons, ‘austerity’ and greed The Big Sing: old and new words for old and new songs |
In September 2012, “We are Waltham Forest Voices”, came together to sing Bob Marley's "One Love" and drown out a handful of racists calling themselves the English Defence League, who tried to march through Walthamstow town centre. Many of those who joined us had never sung in public before. In 2013, a few Walthamstow singers joined with other choirs on the Million Women Rise demonstration, the Waltham Forest Rising Market to Marshes women's day walk. and a TUC march to Defend London's NHS. As a fellow-traveller with Raised Voices since the mid-1980s, I’d like to build on this loose network of Waltham Forest singers to sing together in support of demonstrations for social justice, equality and peace.
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For more political interests see Julia's personal web site
