Question

To ask the Member for Battersea, representing the Church Commissioners, what steps the Church is taking to support churches in rural areas engage local communities in music.

Through the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board, the National Church Institutions are supporting new musical initiatives in churches in the following ways:

• Hympact! is funded in partnership with the Royal School of Church Music, the dioceses of Salisbury and St Albans, to create and publish music and resources, and develop and pilot ‘school to church pathways’. It also includes the development of faith notes for clergy and parish lay staff to use both in schools and churches to explore the theological, religious and spiritual themes of the songs, and to provide a framework within which to engage children and adults in an age-appropriate way on the road to discipleship.

• Choir Church in Blackburn Diocese, seeks to work intensively with eight parishes and schools, planting new local congregations built around children’s choirs which:

a) learn excellent music with the Gospel at the heart;
b) pray and worship together as a congregation of children, parents, teachers, and the wider community;
c) work for social justice using the techniques of community organising, modelling a church which is both of and for the poorest.

The Diocese Investment Programme (DIP) has also recently supported choirs and traditional church music in London and in Southwark dioceses:

In Southwark funding is supporting the establishment of a new junior choir in All Saints Church, Kingston, providing children from all backgrounds with a free first-class musical education. It will:
• involve children in a regular pattern of worship and a supportive church community;
• ensure the future health of the choir;
• bring new families into church, providing excellent opportunities to engage with parents and siblings and encourage them with music education.

In London, the Hackney & Islington Project DIP has funded a music director to support catholic mission & renewal, and support the development of liturgical and sacramental music.

In Portsmouth the Director of Music Dr David Price and his team are working with schools and churches to transform music across the diocese. The cathedral recently welcomed hundreds of school children from Gosport, Fareham, Havant and Portsmouth to a special St Cecilia Evensong and it has partnered with churches such as St Mary’s Fratton, to support the development of a growing and confident choir of children and young people. Portsmouth Cathedral also recently played host to Gabrieli ROAR where 200 young singers from across the diocese joined Portsmouth Grammar School for highly successful choir workshops and ten performances of “A Grand Georgian Christmas”, supported by the Gabrieli Consort.