With the support of a grant from the Development Fund and their strong tradition of music, St Barnabas Church in Oxford established a weekday youth choir to boost engagement with young people and help them to be more comfortable with faith and church.
Starting from scratch, Rachel Maby, Assistant Director of Music for Youth and Outreach at St Barnabas Church, began singing workshops in a few of the local Oxford primary schools reaching hundreds of children, of all singing abilities and giving them a taste of singing in a choir. From this, children started to join weekly rehearsals and so grew the Jericho Youth Choir.
Every Tuesday afternoon, a group of primary school children meets at the church for an hour of accessible and fun music activities led by Rachel. An additional lunchtime choral programme at the Cherwell secondary school was also launched in the autumn with a focus on developing ensemble skills and understanding sacred choral tradition as part of Evensong services.
Speaking about the youth choir, Rachel said:
“At the heart of it has been getting children singing again after pandemic restrictions as well as aiding St Barnabas in becoming a space where the community are welcome and people from all realms of life can walk through the door. Because the choir is free, we are seeing children from many different cultures accessing music, between them, they speak at least 10 languages!”
“Our school workshops have highlighted the negative impact of the pandemic on the confidence of young people and their teachers. So, one of the positive outcomes of the project has been the use of singing as a way of boosting wellbeing and relationships. And it’s not just the children who are benefitting, parents are really starting to gel and form new friendships.”
The Revd Christopher Woods, Vicar at St Barnabas, shared the background to the choir project:
“Despite St Barnabas being founded for the community and historically focusing heavily on education and school engagement, we found that over the last few years our engagement with young people and teenagers wasn’t as strong as it could be, and we needed to find a way of reaching out to this age group.
“As a non-Sunday type activity and different from our choristers, the youth choir has been an excellent way of engaging this younger age group with church. Many have never been to church before and it can be quite daunting going into one for the first time, so the choir is a small step in guiding them to look positively and kindly at the Church. We hope that we can continue to reach this younger generation and develop further opportunities to grow their faith.”
Concerts
The choir performs concerts throughout the year at St Barnabas. Find out more and book tickets on the Jericho Youth Choir website.
Hear the Revd Chris on BBC Radio Oxford
The Development Fund
The Development Fund is open to all parishes and benefices in the Diocese of Oxford and especially those with limited financial resources to invest in missional activity. Applications are now open for the next round of funding and close on 30 April 2022, find out more and apply on the Development Fund page.
The Development Fund was launched in 2019 to enable missional creativity and assist churches in the Diocese of Oxford with their visions to become more Christ-like and support their local communities. Since its launch, the fund has donated over £2.5 million to more than 130 local church projects across the Diocese of Oxford.