Alexa: [00:00:00] You've been thinking about choirs for a while now, haven't you? Maybe you've been thinking about that small but lovely group that you've built in your community, but you're just wondering how to make it bigger and bolder. Or maybe you've been thinking about building that choir in your community for a while now, but you just haven't bitten the bullet yet. 

Well, this week we are joined by The Singspaces Rachel Lynes, who hasn't just built one choir, but forty adult musical theatre choirs located across the country. Rachel has a background in musical theatre, having performed on the West End stage and internationally for a decade. She is a vocal coach and now the founder of the Sing Space Adult Musical Theatre Choirs and she is here to help us understand how to pick the best venue, price the choirs, find the content and build that community group. 

Over to you! Rachel it's been Almost three years to the day since Singing Teachers Talk podcast relaunched and you were one of my [00:01:00] very first interviews. So it feels really timely and really lovely to actually welcome you back today. So how are you?  

Rachel: I'm good, thank you. And I can't believe you just said three years. 

That's terrifying. I have very fond memories of being interviewed by you, but it feels like it might have been about two weeks ago, .  

Alexa: Well, that's good. At least you're not dreading being back. That's, that's the best thing. .  

Rachel: I, I'm ready to go. .  

Alexa: It was recently announced that Gareth Malone has selected Sing Space choirs for the third time to be his official choir on his tour Sing Along a Gareth. 

So congratulations. And what does this mean for your members?  

Rachel: Thank you. It's, it's really exciting. Mostly because it's so much fun. You know, there are times in life where jobs are just pure joy and touring with Gareth is pure joy because I mean, who, who wouldn't love the opportunity to, we're in Thousand Seater Theatres with a live band. 

He's, he's just a lovely guy and it's a pleasure to hang out with him and he always picks [00:02:00] brilliant people to, for his band. Really nice people. So you're hanging out in nice company, you're singing fun songs in harmony in beautiful venues with your choir and with your friends. So, we get to do that. For twenty, I think it's twenty four tour dates this autumn. 

Which is really, really nice, and we're really excited this year because we have done it, we've done it, we did it last year. I think we did about 17 tour dates last year, and the year before I think we did about 6. But this time we are his official choir, so the the thing that we're also most, most excited about is that he's going to be singing our repertoire as well. 

So, we're going to be singing Singspace arrangements in the show, which include a Les Mis, a 10 minute Les Mis medley. Oh,  

Alexa: amazing.  

Rachel: And Million Dreams, and our absolute favourite at the moment, which is Circle of Life.  

Alexa: Rachel, what you've created with Singspace Adult Musical Theatre Choirs is really quite something. 

Not only do you have choirs in almost, what, [00:03:00] 40 locations now, but you've got members who have performed at Cadogan Hall, with Gareth Malone, as we've just mentioned, in Flashmobs across London, and they've featured in, I think it was an Asda Christmas advert with Michael Bublé. I mean, just, wow, something that you've created is, is just incredible. 

So can you take us back to the seed of the idea and tell us why you decided to start up the Singspace Adult Musical Theatre Choir in the first place? And was it always going to be many or did you start with the, with the one?  

Rachel: Can we, can we just, can we just establish something here is that I'm not really a planner. 

When you say seed is probably the right way of asking that question. And it was, it was maybe the seed was almost a seed that I couldn't even see. I didn't even know it was in the ground. It was just sometimes you see a little, a sprout of something coming up and you run with it. And I think that's what happened. 

And I think it was many seeds that come together. And I think that's how business works is that there's all these different different components [00:04:00] come together and then suddenly an idea starts coming and then the garden starts growing. It sounds like a bit of a tenuous way of explaining the way that I work, but it, it wasn't ever a plan. 

It absolutely wasn't. It began because I thought it'd be fun to get into a room with some some friends and to sing show tunes in harmony. So I've been teaching one to one and one to one is brilliant and I love it, but I wanted to sing again, but I didn't want to perform again. And so I didn't really, I thought about, you know, how do I get a bit more singing in my life, but also how do I get more singing in all of my students lives? 

There was a lot of, my one to one students were adults, and some of them were professional, and some of them were amateurs, but they were all really good and they were all really passionate, and I thought, wouldn't it be nice, as well as the one to one, if we all just got together and we sung showtunes in harmony? 

And it was specifically show tunes because I love musical theatre. So it was as simple as saying, has anyone got space? And one of my friends had a spare room that was big enough. [00:05:00] We I think I did an arrangement of One Day More on that first week. And it was really fun. So I started another one in the daytime, so that's an evening one. 

Then my professional client started saying Um, What about us? We would quite like to do one. So I kind of created something that was part vocal coaching course, so a technique syllabus, 12 week technique syllabus, and also a choir, and launched that one in central London. And it was to give pros a chance to sign up to a singing course, but also finish, so you do 45 minutes of technique and then 45 minutes of singing in harmony together. 

So, and, and they all just, they all, you know, filled up really quickly and they all sold out. And then the pandemic happened and I had to close them all down. But it was only after the pandemic happened, I remember getting my tax result came through. And I realised that although the choirs were bringing in quite a lot of money, they were actually making a loss. 

Because to run choirs is, it's a lot of [00:06:00] work outside of the 90 minutes. And the 90 minutes is amazing and people are all paying, you know, their set amounts, which seems like it's bringing in this incredible hourly amount. But when you actually start to realise you're doing the arrangements and you're doing the prep and you're doing the marketing and you're getting the booking system and you're booking concerts and so much more. 

And for me, I was also having to travel in and then you have these hours outside of, you know, you have to book off a morning to go and do the choir because, and you have to hire a really, also the venue space in central London was, you know, extortionate. So I realised I'd made quite a substantial loss despite having four sold out choirs. 

So, at that point we were all working online and actually it was Jo, thanks to Jo at Singspace who's not, she's working somewhere else now, but she just said, why don't you do your choirs? And I kept saying, because they just, I love it, I love it, I love it, I wish I could, but they're not going to make any money. 

And then, I thought, well, that's the problem for all of us vocal [00:07:00] coaches. We probably all like to run one day a week. We would probably like to get in a room with our one to one clients and our friends and our family, because now we all have family members joining our choir. We would probably love to get in a room. 

And it's such joy, I mean it's exquisite joy, it's like euphoric joy, it's the best thing in the world, singing, singing five part harmony musical theatre with your mates and your, you know, and your friends and family. And I, but I just knew that financially it's, it's a lot, it's a lot on anyone, so that's when we started to create a kind of shared structure. 

We're like, well, okay, so I started speaking to some of our original choir leaders who are, you know, All a pretty similar demographic to me. So a lot of them had a kind of West End past, worked in the West End for about 10 years, moved out of London now teaching singing outside of London, have a big client list, would love to do this, don't know how to do it. 

And said, well, okay, so if we invested a bit more in kind of setting this structure up better. So we, we did a shared, shared [00:08:00] software, shared booking system, shared client management. Shared arrangements, shared performance opportunities, uh, you have, you know, the team, there's, you know, a team of people looking after you so that hopefully, you know, you can manage your choir, but you don't, we don't have to double up or quadruple up or, you know, now 40 up, whatever the word for that is, everyone doing this stuff on their own. 

Would this work? And it was very, very much a kind of, um, case of a question mark. Would this work? It wasn't, there was never a business plan or anything. It was just a kind of agreement. We're going to go on a partnership here. And it's always just being a kind of 50, 50 thing of saying, you know, you go in the room and teach, you market locally and we'll manage the kind of the national side of things and the arrangements and the software and everything like that. 

And that's how it began. And That's, and now we've got 40 choirs after, it's less than two years. So it, [00:09:00] it seems to be that we're leaning into the right direction.  

Alexa: It's an amazing story, Rachel. And so we would love to get some advice. Cause I'm sure there are listeners who are really interested in maybe building a choir or even interested in maybe becoming a sing space choir. 

So I'd love to kind of know some of the details on things like. A venue? What is a good venue for running a choir and how have you scouted these out across the country? Because you do have choirs up north and down south, so how have you found the best place for them to happen?  

Rachel: Well, so we have a whole, we'll have a whole training week on venues because it's crucial. 

The venue is, you know, part of the whole personality if you walk into a beautiful church, you know, versus you know, a community hall, you're going to get a different feeling. So we've actually got a quite in depth checklist of all the crucial things almost in order. So acoustics space, we always have space for up to 100 people because our choirs I mean, our two latest choirs, Glasgow and Lancaster [00:10:00] have they've sold out over 100 before they've even started. 

So so we have quite a big space, but also allowing for a big space means you've got a performance venue. So it's thinking ahead about getting somewhere that you could also do your end of term performances. , uh, a couple of other things that I would always advise is having a pub nearby, because we've realized that choir is a lot more than a choir, it's a community. 

And You, it's, it's, it's a part of the whole experience up, you know, the 90 minutes in the room is great. But then most of the choir goes to the pub afterwards. And that's another few hours worth, you know, and so having a pub and parking nearby is, is really important. So I think the feeling of the room and the pub and the parking and also you start to realize things that you learn, we all learn and can hive mind like, if it's a secondary school. 

Check when their exams are happening because you're likely to be told otherwise. Oh, sorry. They're doing their GCSEs this term So you can't come in for four weeks and that's [00:11:00] really stressful to have to tell 60 people that you know We've got to find another venue. So it's it's there's quite a lot of little things Yeah, to, to just check out ahead of time. 

Alexa: Are you finding that there are some venues that are more cost effective for you? And do you have maybe more churches compared to halls? Or really, does it just depend where the location is?  

Rachel: I think a tip is always ask for the community rate, because most, most of the time, even though we're not a charity, At the moment, though, that is something that we're looking into becoming. 

We are, we're definitely a community and there's often a community rate. I have to say that the pricing is quite, quite random. I think some venues really try their luck and they come back and ask for, you know, It's 80 an hour, and some of them come in at, you know, 13 an hour, so it's really, really quite variable. 

I mean, one thing I would also suggest is finding somewhere with storage, because it's worth investing in kit if you're going to run a choir, even if it costs, you know, [00:12:00] 500 to get the PA and the full size piano in there, the keyboard once it's there, you do not want to be lugging that kind of thing around every week, and hopefully this is something you're going to run for five years, so it's going to pay for itself back. 

Alexa: A choir isn't a choir without the singers. And you've just mentioned that you've got two that have sold out over a hundred people before they've even started up. So what would be your top tip for listeners who want to start up their own choir about actually recruiting members in?  

Rachel: We do have a Singspace recruitment strategy that, that we use and it, it has worked now, not just the 40 times, but also on my own choirs. 

So it's something I did. before. I think all you can do is spread the word in your community. I think if you're not using the exact kind of, we've, we've got a kind of, a little secret recipe. We have about five different kind of things that we say and we do that seems to have now created a kind of a sell out choir strategy.[00:13:00]  

But I think around that it's mostly immersing yourself in the community because if you think every person who's going to join, is likely to tell their friends and family they're all joining the choir. It's quite big news. You know, if I was to sum up our typical choir member, it's probably someone who was very, very, very good at singing at school and loved it. 

Maybe did it up to kind of university level, maybe did their, you know, they've always enjoyed singing, but they didn't do it professionally. And maybe they had a family or they, they got a, you know, a real job. And then they've seen this choir and it's show tunes and they love show tunes and they love harmony and they know that this is a harmony choir and it's got sheet music. 

So we've got someone who's of this kind of, I really want to do this. They're very likely to tell everyone what they're doing, like I did when I fell in love with Hot Pod Yoga. You know, a big shout out for hot pod yoga. I love it and told everyone who'd listened to me, you know, it'd be a bus stop and I'd just join this hot pod [00:14:00] yoga. 

It's amazing. So good for your mental health. So what you want is you want, you want to kind of get those advocates. So essentially I'd say the marketing is hard in terms of thumbs on seats in the first place. But once your choir is going, you're essentially, if you're providing something that is joyful, then the joy is the marketing and the people in the room will spread that. 

Alexa: So you say you have your own little secret recipe, and I promise we're not going to ask you to reveal, but you can keep that one to yourself. But I am hands up really crap at the business side of things. So would you have a tip on how to learn a little bit more of how to market acquire? And maybe if you have a bit of advice on how to work that out, that might be quite useful. 

Rachel: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd say I am a handler. I hate the marketing side. I hate it just because it makes you feel icky. You know, it's just the feeling in your body. When someone says the word marketing or selling, it feels icky. So the first thing we've done as a company, which I think is really helpful for you to do if you're starting your own choir, [00:15:00] is start with the product and how much you believe in it. 

So think about why are you doing this? Because you actually want to, and because you think it will bring joy. Once you fully feel that inside of you, and you'll feel that as a kind of a physical thing, you'll feel that kind of sense of openness in your chest. You'll know when you've got to the point where it feels like a sincere, authentic belief in what you're doing. 

Then it's so much easier to sell that because you can just go out there and you can go. You know, you can just tell people you're starting this thing about wine. So if it's not a musical theatre choir, maybe it's because you wanted to start a, I don't know a Parkinson's choir, or you wanted to start a close harmony a cappella group. 

But if you are really sincere and authentic about what you really want to do and what you want it to look like, then I think it's not marketing. It's something else. It's offering something to people. And then if you [00:16:00] balance that with pricing it fairly, So, you know, we've always stuck around the 10 pounds a session mark because we think that's fair. 

It's kind of standardized choir pricing. It's more than some of the community choirs, but it's a 90 minute session and, you know, they get a lot for that. Which we can talk about. But yeah, I think if you price it fair, if you believe in what you're doing, you price it fairly. That's the first step. And then in terms of reaching people, it's really a case of just looking at how many How to, how, you just, you kind of go through as a tick list, so you've got social media, and you can, you just, you write a list. 

You know, you've got Instagram, you've got Facebook, you've got Facebook ads, you've got flyering, you've got banners, you've got posters, you've got local newspapers, you've got local radio stations. So we have, we kind of help with that because it can feel quite overwhelming and we have a kind of a micro goal process for choir leaders starting up so that you only ever have to do one thing a week. 

So I'd advise that as well as not going, Oh my God, I can't, I can't I can't [00:17:00] market. I'm really bad at marketing. I feel awful. Choose one of those and go, This week I'm going to do a press release. And so, you know, for us, we have a kind of standardized press release and we advise all the choir leaders just to Google all of the local press in the area and send out the press release about the choir. 

Like, so, you know, We say, you know, the West End comes to Marlborough and then they can fill in all of the local bits of information and that's a really successful way. You often get invited onto radios to talk about it and into, you know, get some newspaper articles coming out about it. We do offer paid ads and we're always playing with that to optimise it. 

But actually social the local, local Facebook groups are brilliant. Helping the buzz.  

Alexa: You know there are some people who don't trust other people who aren't dog lovers or people who don't dunk their biscuit into their cup of tea. Now I'm not saying that I can't be friends with someone who doesn't enjoy a show tune, [00:18:00] but maybe I'll slightly be judging them inside perhaps. 

You can't not love a show tune.  

Rachel: What's the perfect combination, isn't it? Emotion and music together. Like  

Alexa: what's, yeah. What's not to love? Exactly. What's, what's going on there?  

Rachel: Maybe something that, like, you're born with or you're not, because it seems to be so mild. Like, maybe there's an area of the brain that they haven't discovered yet. 

You know, some kind of musical theatre area, little cluster of neurons that either does or doesn't fire. I love that.  

Alexa: I love that. And of course, everybody has their own taste, but it's just that musical theatre trumps them all, I must admit.  

Rachel: We have the best key changes.  

Alexa: Yes, we do.  

Rachel: And the most overuse of triplets as well. 

Alexa: I mean, what more do you need? Your choirs are based within the musical theatre genre, so it's arguably a little bit more niche than maybe some contemporary pop choirs. So what challenges have you faced here in terms of getting [00:19:00] people in? I mean, it doesn't seem to be that you've had much of an issue getting your choirs filled up, but have you found that the genre has caused you an obstacle at all? 

Rachel: No, the genre has been our selling point, because if you say do you want to join a musical theatre choir, it's quite quick. You either go, people either go, yes! This is what I've been looking for my whole life. Or they go, uh, that is not for me. So our biggest obstacle I think has been men. Not that men are the obstacle, but we don't have, we just don't have enough men. 

So, you know, if you're listening you know, please, please come along. I think, uh, I think it's about, you know, for every choir we public about 5 percent men in our choir. It's very small. And then, then the next obstacle was, well, what do we do with the vocal part? And. Because if you've got, you know, I've got about 65 of my choirs and I've got about four men. 

So with those four men you know, hang on, what if we've got a bass and we've got a tenor [00:20:00] and we've got a baritone? What do we do? And so we, we have, we have our strategy and it's taken a couple of years to get to. And it's not ideal. And it's hopefully once we grow our men, we can, we can, we can open this up. 

But what we've had to do is we've had to create a kind of, uh, a mid range male line. So they can sing together because we felt like otherwise they'd feel really exposed having to sing, you know, one, one bass or one tenor and one baritone. And we've also had to put them in line with the SOP twos. So it's a nice baritone line that sits with them. 

So it means that again, because even with only four of them, if three of them are quite timid, they don't necessarily want to be singing their own line. And then one week, two of them aren't there, and there's only two of them. So we've, we've, we've put them with us op twos. So that's been our biggest obstacle. 

And that's something that we really want to work on because we want to be as, we are a very, very inclusive choir. [00:21:00] And in terms of, you know, Uh, um, physical accessibility, neurodivergence with being and, and, and race and gender and everything else. We're always trying to be inclusive and we're aware that we are also, we are having this, you know, we also wanna be inclusive to men as well, 

So we're trying our best.  

Alexa: Yeah, and musical theater is so broad. You've got commercial shows like Les Mis and then the lesser known musicals, like 35 millimeter musical exhibition, for example. So how do you select and arrange the material that you work on in sessions? And is this, you've described that you kind of share this out, so is this constant across all the locations? 

You send the material out so you're all doing the same thing?  

Rachel: Exactly. So when I was doing it myself, I was spending hours a week, I was finding arrangements, I was creating arrangements myself. And then when you've created the arrangement, you've got to create the vocal line recordings for the different parts as well. 

So I was having to sing those through, which was taking me a bit of time, because if you mess up the rhythm on one part, you've got to do it again. So I mean, it was a [00:22:00] substantial amount of time, you know, for me not being a sight singer. It was, you know, a couple of weeks for me to get this, and also being hard on my own vocals. 

So now we have everything is, we're very lucky, we've got Anthony who runs five Northern choirs. He is our MD of the company, and he sources out, he's always looking for arrangers. So, arrangers get in touch, and they show us an example of their work, and we have a big arrangers that we use, and then we have a structure to our terms. 

So we always start the first two weeks, we have welcoming songs, so easier, two or three parts. And then we get onto our big, you know complex four, five part, our five part on week four. So we put out these to tender to different arrangers, and then, then we, we constantly exploring different arrangers. 

And we've got quite, we've learned a lot about what arrangements work, so we've got a whole checklist for the arrangers of just saying, you know, small things that you discover, like not doing a complex harmony at the same time as a complex rhythm. [00:23:00] Um, allowing every part to have the tune at some point. You know, making sure that the alto two isn't constantly too low, that it sometimes swaps up with the alto one. 

You know, things like that you start to realise. So we've got quite, we've really got quite good at. Telling the arrangers what the brief is, so then they come back with something that suits our choirs. So Anthony does that, and he does it about a year ahead. And then we've got online resources, we use an online course system, so our members and our choir leaders have access to each, each arrangement will have they have videos with the sheet music. 

So a full vocal mix a lowered vocal mix if they want to have the, you know, the vocals in the background. Every vocal guideline together and then a MD score and a member score that doesn't have piano. And they have an app and they have a desktop version of this. So our members all have an app and they can practice at home. 

And the choir leaders get sent this a few, about a couple of months before. And then they have all their [00:24:00] music sorted for them. And what we say is we always start off with the same music, but if they want to go off and create their own arrangements or choose their own songs from past Things Based Rep, because we've got about 30 arrangements in the past they can do that. 

And it, to be honest, if they want to, if they want to change anything, that we're quite flexible as a company, as we're not, if somebody doesn't like an arrangement and doesn't want to teach it, no one's going to have to do that because. It's not going to be fun for your choir if you don't, if you're not loving it. 

So I think, so that's, and in terms of how we find our arrangements, in terms of there being a whole breadth of musical theatre to choose from I think I learnt my lesson at the beginning, I was choosing, you know, I think I did Songs for a New World, A Six Minute Company Medley, and Purple Summer from Spring Awakening. 

And because I was like, these are amazing, let's, let's do my favorite songs. And, and it was fine because it was just my little choir. But if you, we realize that people maybe want [00:25:00] to know the singer songs that they know better than that. Maybe a Six Minute Company medley is not the one to be starting term with. 

We've kind of, We have those in the back pocket, but some of our choirs have little ensembles who, who like to do a bit of extra rehearsing on extra material.  

Alexa: And you mentioned before about there's a technique element involved in your choirs as well. So how do you incorporate that for a group of quite a few individuals with varying singing experience and maybe at different levels of technical ability? 

Rachel: So we have a 12 length syllabus and it's, it's quite broad so it could be as simple as, uh, week two your articulators, or it could be week three, breathing. And we say just use that as a theme and try and keep it experiential. So that is your theme. So when you, we do a 15 minute warmup and it's, you know, sort of get them into their bodies, do a kind of [00:26:00] nervous system calming, get them in the room. 

Get their brains awake do some harmony building and don't change that. Don't stand there and talk about the breath for 15 minutes because they've come to sing, but as you're doing that, draw their attention to the breath and the body and anything that could be restricting it. So as vocal coaches, they know. 

the voice inside out. So although we're not offering, you know uh, like one to one feedback, we're just, we're just creating that 90 minutes. We're, we're incorporating as much as we can, as much knowledge as we can about the breath articulators or anything that has come, you know, that is your theme for the week. 

Alexa: And singing in harmony, some choir members might have had exposure to that before, or maybe they're completely new and doing what a lot of us do when we start singing harmony, which is get distracted and follow other lines. So have you got a favorite exercise for teachers on how to teach singing a vocal harmony? 

Rachel: The [00:27:00] choirs, the choirs grow as a, as a tribe together. I mean, I think Marlborough, who, they're my choir and I started three years ago in January. I think they wouldn't mind me saying, like, when they started off, they weren't making as good a sound as they are now. Like, they were, they were very timid. And that, and they were a little, and they were a little pitchy. 

Sorry, Marlborough, you're amazing now. You're amazing. You're absolutely rock stars. So I think a lot of it is just trusting the process of that and mixing as way, as many ways of teaching as possible. So we'll, I always do a harmony, a kind of an ear by ear thing at the beginning of a session. Which, you know, is, is, is just up and it's in their body and everyone layers. 

So everyone learns the alto too. Then while everyone keeps doing it, we add in this, we add in this, and everyone's singing and everyone's trying each part. I think there's mixing that with saying, look, whether or not you read sheet music, let's start to just become a bit more comfortable with it. So when the notes go up, Sing higher when the notes go down, sing lower. 

That's the first week, you know, if you haven't ever [00:28:00] seen sheet music, these are bars. Week two, you know, week three, hey, did you know that this, you know, this empty circle there is four beats. So you gradually, gradually, without overwhelming them, start to Give them as many tools as possible. We have lots of techniques, you know, we get them in groups around the room, singing just with their group so that the confident people can lead. 

We use our vocal guides to give them confidence at the beginning so that they can hear what it's going to sound like in the end, we make sure the practice resources are really strong so they can do it in their own time. If they're not as confident as well.  

Alexa: How does that then evolve over progressive terms? 

So if you have new members joining in. Do you then do the same sort of 12 week pattern where you kind of go, okay, we're going to look at the breath again so we can introduce it to these new people or is it different?  

Rachel: Well, I think, I'm sure you would agree. I mean, I, for me, I've heard people talk [00:29:00] about the breath. 

You know, I'm, I'm 42. I've had, you know, especially running the vocal gym, you know, Barbara talks about it one week, Heidi talks about it, Heidi Moss talks about it, Barbara Tans, let's just say their full names, like we know, just like, like.  

Alexa: We  

Rachel: had some amazing people come in and each time anyone talks about anything, you learn more. 

So with a topic like the breath, we probably would do it each term. We may slightly say one, one term, it might be the breath and the body. It might be the breath and nervous system. It might be, it might, we might slightly change the wording, but essentially. If someone's heard about the breath, you know, four months earlier, I think they're going to benefit from hearing about it again when it's in relation to singing. 

So yeah, we do repeat the kind of common topics. And actually it's a lot to take in because we as vocal coaches, we've got 20 years worth of experience on, for example, the breath. We're telling people who've never [00:30:00] even heard about half of this. So when you say it again, you reiterate it the next term. 

they're okay to hear it again. And most of them actually, they'll just get more depth from it the second time and will have changed the exercises. And so so that's quite, quite an easy thing to do because, I mean, to be honest, I would, I could talk about the breath for about four weeks, probably. So but also each term, even if you've got newbies, you might get a newbie who's a professional singer, whereas you could have someone there who's been there for three years, Only comes to choir. 

So you've got, you've got a real variation of, of, of experience levels in any room.  

Alexa: You speak really highly of all of your choir leaders, and it's really great that they've got you as a support network for this. What qualities do you think are important in a Singspace choir leader?  

Rachel: I think my secret is that I've hired every single one of them that I didn't know, uh, and most of them I, I have known personally as well [00:31:00] probably in about two minutes, because it's, I think the quality is, well, you know Kat Ogden, she has it. 

Do you want, do you think this person is going to create a, like, a safe, joyous room? And it's, it's, It's really, it's really, you're looking for people who can stand in front of up to 100 people for 90 minutes. and to give them, those people, you know, a great time. And by the time that I've met them, I've, I know from their CV that they, that there's they have experience as a vocal coach, which I think is really important for us. 

It's quite a unique selling point of our choirs that We've got vocal coaches and it's not just that you know about the voice which is amazing and our choirs do, I think I can say, our choirs do sound exceptional and I can say that because it's not me leading them all and I'm not singing in them, you know. 

They sound amazing because they're led by [00:32:00] vocal coaches and I think that is quite a unique thing in choirs to have really experienced vocal coaches leading choirs. So they, they, they, they have that. And it shows that I know, I know that they probably can run a business because they've got one to one clients. 

They have a bit of awareness on maybe a bit of marketing and a bit of management. Piano skills is always great. If someone's like a brilliant accompanist, but actually, Actually, we've been leaning more into saying, even if you can play piano, don't use it too much in the room because, you know, if you get the lines in your body and you're teaching and your eyes are up and you're communicating with your choir, that's so much more engaging than if your eyes are down on the music and you're looking at that. 

So unless you're someone who can play piano without even looking, you know I've been using less and less piano. A bit, a bit of chords for me is I'll use when I'm teaching, but I keep trying to get away from the piano. So and if we've even got a couple of choir leaders who don't play really any piano, but they've just, it's just a bit harder for them. 

They've [00:33:00] had to learn the vocal lines and they do just kind of do a bit of note bashing. I think that would be the, the, the minimum would be. note bashing, knowing how to read music and be able to note bash, um, and, and some basic chords, I would say. What's the other criteria? Often that you've performed in some way. 

And that's only because if you haven't ever performed, it's just a bigger hurdle standing in front of a room of a hundred people, um, lead them. So if you know somebody who's done, had quite extensive performing experience, gigging, in the West End, whatever it's been, you know that they're probably going to have that thing where they switch on in front of a room and can do that. 

And then it's, as I say, it comes down to that kind of essence and energy of them as a human being and being an instinct if they're going to be a good, kind person and look after their community because that's what their choir is going to become.  

Alexa: We know that community choirs can contribute to a person's [00:34:00] well being. 

We've had Sarah Summers on the podcast talking about some of her research and Ogden that you mentioned there talking about well being and the health benefits of singing in general we we know are out there in the research papers. Why do you think your members return each week to choir sessions and what have been some feedback that you've gotten from your members? 

Rachel: I think it's become, I think community is the, the thing. I think Singspace has become a really strong community for them. It's I mean, the singing, yes, like, top layer, five part harmony, musical theatre, they sound amazing. Tor and McGareth, ship them out anywhere and they're going to absolutely raise the roof. 

But at the core of it, at the heart of it, is this heart and, and care and it's, it's a very inclusive place and so people come in who are very nervous and then they come in and they see that everyone's there drinking tea before the session and they're welcomed in. And we've got some people who are part of. 

Well, some people who are part of our choirs [00:35:00] who wouldn't necessarily be accepted in other places. I hope I can share the story. We've got a woman who has seizures and she finds it really hard because she could have them anywhere that she goes. So she could, you know, if she went out to a party or she went and did a yoga class or something, she could have a seizure. 

But our choir, we all know that. And if it happens. we know how to deal with it and we're not afraid of it and the choir are beautiful and it makes me want to cry now. There's, you know, this is a, you know, it happens and if I'm still teaching, I'll see people get up and they'll, they'll know just to put her in a safe space and to be there and what to do. 

And it means that she can still come to choir and she can still be part of, she's got a community. So in a sense it's like a church without the religion, you know, there's that part of that place to go each week. And for people who may be You know, just need a release. Maybe even like, you know, someone who's working full time and his mom, they can come out, they can [00:36:00] sing, forget themselves, and then go and have a beer afterwards as well with a bunch of new friends. 

So, you know, I think I didn't realise, I really didn't realise how, like, what this was that we were setting up. I say we as it, like, this kind of collaborative effort of setting this up. I didn't get it. I thought we were doing musical theatre choirs and now I'm like, you know, I'm realising, okay, no, no, no. 

This is, this is so much more than a musical theatre choir. In fact, maybe we should be getting M& S for our sponsors now because it's so much more. Definitely, this is not just a musical piece of choir.  

Alexa: Absolutely, yeah. That would be great. You'll be on your Christmas advert with them next.  

Rachel: Yeah! Yeah. I'll give it a go. 

Anyone got any contacts? Yeah, so I mean I think that's That's why people come back for the music and people come back for the, for the community.  

Alexa: You mentioned at the beginning that you're actually now seeking maybe a [00:37:00] charity status. So what's the process of that like and is that what you're kind of hoping to take Sing Space to? 

Rachel: I think it's a confusing one. I think it's a you know, I, I maybe shouldn't share that so early on, but I think we're aware that a lot of what we're doing is definitely community, would hit all the criteria of a community interest company or a charity. We raised 25, 000 last year for charity because of just doing end of term concerts. 

Wow. So it's just that the potential is there to do that. So it's just something that we are looking into as, as part of the structure of it. It's a possibility that we do that. So it's very, very early days. I'm someone who's kind of always got the doors open for every possibility. You know, we've discussed all sorts of ways that the business could go or not go. 

There's also a possibility that it's just as real, that we stop growing and we concentrate on what we have and we enjoy it. And that's there and there's also, there's [00:38:00] always kind of, you know, I try to stay open to everything and then just kind of listen. And at some point you know which way to take the company. 

Alexa: What would be your biggest bit of advice to somebody who would really like to start their own choir but doesn't have the foggiest idea of where to start? I  

Rachel: think just do it. Maybe first of all ask yourself a really honest question. Are you doing this for money or are you doing this for the love of it? 

And if it's a bit of both, start to figure that bit out first. So, so say you're a one to one singing teacher. This is, I guess I'd ask myself the following. So say we've got, you know, let's call her Jenny, and she's got, she wants to start a choir, and she's living in Wolverhampton, and she, she wants to start this choir. 

It'd be about 90 minutes. I would say, right, the starting point is you need to make more than you would with your one to ones. Maybe that's your first, first thing that you do. So if you're, she's charging, you know, let's say she's charging. I don't know what the standardized rate is here. But the first thing is that 90 minutes is going to [00:39:00] need set up time. 

So it's probably, let's say two hours or say two and a half hours. It probably would end later than her one to one, so she probably wouldn't lose that time anyway. So say she's only ever getting clients till eight o'clock, if she was running at 7. 30 till nine, maybe she could go, oh actually it's, it's, well, two hours that I'll lose on those clients. 

And then that's two hours, so say, say she was charging 50 an hour, it's 100, and then say the venue was 50, so it's 150. Then she would, then you would go, okay let's, let's just say I want to earn a little bit more because of prep time, but this is something as if assuming that Jenny wants to do this because of joy, first of all let's say she wants to earn 200 or 250 pounds for that acquire. 

Then she'd go, okay, that's 10 pounds a person I'm going to charge all right, I need to aim for, you know, 15 to cover costs. 200, 250, anything else is going to cover more if I get 35 people in that's 350 pounds. [00:40:00] So that's probably the starting point. And that's at least where I started with, and as I said, it was only later that I did discover that maybe I wasn't actually making that because the amount of time that I was marketing and preparing and everything else, it was probably costing me to run, but I still would do it again. 

You know, if I didn't have sing space, I would still, I would still set up that choir that would cost me to run in Marlborough because it was such a joy. But obviously it's a massive bonus if you can run that and then figure out a more cost efficient way of doing it. And if you don't work with someone like us who provide the other side of things, there are, you know, there are, you can buy arrangements. 

I don't know exactly how, but there are lots of sites you can, you can purchase those arrangements. And I bet you can purchase arrangements with some vocal line recordings. I think why we don't do that. I know why we don't do that is because we want to arrange for our group. So we know the, the level We're SSAAB. 

So, you know, we have to have ours [00:41:00] bespoke. So yeah, that's probably my first advice. And, and, and you'll be absolutely fine if you want to do that, you know, have faith that people will find you. If you've got, if you've got that drive to do it, they will, your people will find you.  

Alexa: Are you looking for more sing space choir leaders? 

And if so, how can people get involved?  

Rachel: So, theoretically we really are. So, we do a recruitment drive once a year. We don't, we launch in one go so the next, the next time we will be calling out, we would say, send it, send us an email any time. Send it to inquiries at the Sinkspace and Jodie's going to collate that. 

Then in January we're going to put out a an email. We'll start interviewing January. We'll interview January to March and we'll January to end of February and then we would do a big training day in London in April with new leaders and existing leaders and then we take people through launch ready for September 2026. 

So theoretically we are and if you look on our site you [00:42:00] can see there's lots of areas of the country we're really quite empty in and some that we're really quite full in. You know, we've got a lot of choirs, for example, at, you know, I don't know, around the kind of Milton Keynes, Stephenage, uh, Luton, Cambridgey area, but we've got lots of areas that don't have. 

that don't have choirs in. So yeah, if it's, if you fit the criteria and you've got the, like, the drive for this, it's something that you'd love to do, then really do get in touch because it's a beautiful company to work for.  

Alexa: You've got a choir starting up very soon for the autumn term, I can imagine. So can you tell us about your, your choirs and what's coming up and what the autumn term has in store for them? 

Rachel: So yes, um, autumn term, we've got 40 choirs. We've got 14 of them are new.  

Alexa: That's exciting.  

Rachel: Good luck to our new choir leaders, they're amazing. There we are doing the new choirs, we're starting off with some greatest [00:43:00] showmen. I know, you know, it's been done before, we've got a very new special arrangement of This Is Me. 

Then the new choirs are starting off with a Les Mis medley, which is always first term. And our existing choirs are doing Sound of Music, medley, very exciting one. I it was arranged by a guy called Oliver, and my the, the brief to him was, Can you make favourite things sound like Jason Robert Brown? 

Alexa: Ooh! I like that idea.  

Rachel: So it's a really cool medley with a slight little kind of a slightly more modernised bit in the, in the centre of it. And then we're doing Once Upon a December and some Christmas songs to end with. And obviously touring with Gareth, so we've got quite a busy term.  

Alexa: And when does the tour with Gareth actually start? 

Rachel: It was going to be on the October 29th in Cheltenham, which is when I'm leading but now he's added Chelmsford. So our Sarah is, who has a choir in Chelmsford, will be kicking off very, very soon.  

Alexa: That's so exciting. So, I mean, I wish you all the best and congratulations with what you've built. [00:44:00] It really is amazing. 

How can people find out more about your choirs? Just remind us of the website for that.  

Rachel: Yeah, so you can just, you can probably Google Singspace Choir, and it should come up with Singspace singspacechoir. com and then you can find local choir by clicking on it, it shows you a whole map. Or you can email me, rachel, at singspace. 

com, or Jodie at inquiries at singspace. com. I mean, you know, when I say it's a beautiful company for work for, I feel like, oh, can I say that as like, it's my company, but it doesn't feel like it's my company when I say that. It feels like it's, it's, it's. There's so many, there's so many people who are making this. 

You know, into a community. So yeah, please do get involved. But if, you know, we are really open to meeting new people at any point. Or, I should say, is it okay to also do a call out? We're starting one very special choir in September that I think could really be of interest to some of the vocal coaches who want to come and check us out, but also use their own voices and we fall in love with singing again. 

[00:45:00] So we've just, we're starting a choir at the Actors Church in central London on a Tuesday daytime. And what's really special about this one, apart from it being a daytime so that, that, you know, mums with kids can come or vocal coaches can come who will have to work after school time. It's run by two, three, Naveen Earls, who is one of the best MDs in the world, in my opinion. 

And he, I always ask him to train our choir leaders. So whenever we have CPD, he comes along and he just inspires us so much. He's so on it with leading choirs and he happens to be available. So we've asked him to lead our Central London choir. So we've got this beautiful thing. All the choir leaders are going to be part of that. 

They can, they can come and be part of that choir as well and we get to learn from Nav but also it's well, you know, it's open to vocal coaches, professional singers, amateur singers and I think it's Tuesday at 10. 30 starting [00:46:00] in a couple of weeks, so we've got a few spaces there, so I think that's, that's, that's the, the one that I'd really like to share with your community, because I think it would be you know, It's what I would have, I wished I would have had when I was a vocal coach working in the London area or commutable to London. 

Alexa: Yeah, brilliant. And I've heard clips of your material, your choir's material, when they've performed at the Cadogan Hall and also the stuff that you had with the Lion King, because is it right you had somebody come in and do that from The West End?  

Rachel: For every, every time we try and bring people in from the West End just because having someone who's worked on that show, teaching that music, I mean, you know, it's, it's joyous for the choir leader and for the choir members, so Eddie Elliot came in, we loved him so much that all the choir leaders ended up bringing him into pretty much all the choirs, and then we brought him back, we did a musical, musical fest, essentially a big musical festival at Goldsmith Uni last week and we had 250 people singing. 

[00:47:00] back to back at Goldsmith with all these amazing West End headliners and Eddie came in at the end and did a Circle of Life again, even though people had already had him in, they all came and did that workshop, chose to do that one.  

Alexa: You can tell from the way you describe this that it's a real community. So again, congratulations, and we wish you all the best with you and your, your choir members going on tour with Gareth and everything that is in store for it. So, Rachel Lynes, thank you so much for joining me.  

Rachel: Absolutely, it's always a treat to talk to you.