Choirs gather for special events throughout district
AS PART of the City of Culture Year local Bradford Choirs around the district- Bradford Voices, Ben Rhydding Community Choir, Bridging Borders and Bradford Friendship Choir, are pleased to welcome the 41st Street Choir Festival. The weekend will be shared with Windrush Generations- Carnival of Culture.
The weekend includes a full programme of street singing, concerts and workshops.
Members of the public will be entertained free by the festival's visiting choirs, from across the UK who will assemble in City Park on Saturday June 14. They will be welcomed to the event and the city by James Mason, chief executive of West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce.
At 10.30am until 11am the choirs will sing together in what they call a Mass Sing. This will be an uplifting experience of more than 50 choirs and around 1100 singers, with the singing together unaccompanied in four-part harmony. They will sing songs of peace, unity and solidarity. Prior to this the audience will be warmed up by Bradford-based band the Peace Artistes.
After the Mass Sing the choirs will sing in 15 locations around the city centre for shoppers and passers-by who can stop, listen, reflect and relax. On the evening choirs will then showcase their songs at St George's Hall.
Bradford is one of the first places in the UK to be recognised as a City of Sanctuary and has always welcomed people seeking a safe place of refuge, it is also the only city in the UK with a Peace Museum which is now housed in Salts Mill, Saltaire, so it is a fitting location.
First held in Sheffield in 1984 as the National Street Band Festival, the Street Choirs Festival brought together musicians who played in the signature marches and protests of a politically turbulent decade. The intention of the festival is to put music into protest to make it more creative, joyful and thought provoking.
The festival has expanded to welcome community choirs who sing together for the love of singing. It includes women's choirs, asylum seeker choirs, anarchist choirs, socialist choirs, , LGBTQ choirs, choirs singing to raise awareness of human rights, social justice, environmental justice, climate justice and other campaigns. It has been hosted by community choirs across the UK, from Edinburgh to Brighton, Aberystwyth to Whitby and in 2026 it will be in Dumfries and Galloway. Bradford has hosted the festival twice before, in 1999 and 2005.
More than 1200 eco-friendly handmade recycled bags made by the many sewers at Bingley-based Morsbags and screen printed by local firm Fingerprints have been produced for the Street Choir Festival. Morsbags in Bingley, are linked to the Plastic-Free Bingley action group and have a team of dedicated volunteers make shopping bags from donated pieces of fabric which are then given to a host of town shops to pass on to their customers.The aim is to encourage people to reduce their use of plastic bags and encourage recycling and reusing by handing out the bags.
For more information visit
facebook.com/streetchoirs2025; Streetchoirsbradford@gmail.com; Morsbags.org.uk
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