About Kaleidoscope Community Music

The seeds of Kaleidoscope Community Music were sown in April 1997 when a group of people got together and decided to form a community choir in Derby. This idea evolved from some singing classes that Vivien Ellis ran at St. Helen's House for Derby City Adult Education. Deborah Allitt was the first musical director of Kaleidoscope Choir and the group met every week at the Multicultural Centre in Normanton. In the Autumn of 1998, Deb decided to stop conducting the choir, and a small group of choir members took on leading the weekly sessions. These were Pili Arauho, Nell Connell and Beth de Lange. Pili moved to Belper and started up a new choir called Rough Truffles, and Beth ended up as the musical director of Kaleidoscope Choir. In 2001, we moved our weekly sessions to the newly opened VoiceBox. At that time we had an average of 12 people attending the weekly sessions, but the group has gradually grown and now we get around 30 every week. The choir has recorded two cds of our favourite songs, and regularly performs at community events.

Beth had the idea of formally constituting the group, so that we could provide more opportunities for people to take part in music in Derby, so Kaleidoscope Community Music became an organisation in October 2002. Our first project was called Derby_Sings, which ran during 2003 and was funded by Awards for All. We invited some of the UK's favourite community singing leaders to Derby, and also ran Bulgarian, Georgian and Southern African singing workshops. The project was very successful, attracting lots of people to the workshops, and we still run these workshops now.

Our next project was World Song Derby which ran from April 2004 to April 2006, which brought people from many different cultures together to share songs with each other and the wider singing community. This project was funded by Arts Council England, Awards for All and Small Change. The project culminated in a showcase day with performances and workshops, and a songbook and double cd were produced.

We also ran a song writing project for young people aged 11 to 16 during 2006. We worked with three groups - one at Noel Baker School, one at Mandela Centre and one at Murray Park School. Each group produced a cd of their songs, recorded at Amp Studios, Madeley Centre.

Kaleidoscope Community Music is managed by a committee, who meet three times each year. It employs staff for project development work, and community musicians on freelance basis. Most of our admin is done voluntarily at the moment.