Hello lovely Sing and Inspire followers and a very happy Tuesday to you! Well the last few weeks have been full of the joys of winter – even we had to slow down a bit. We were going to start work with Educ8, an excellent Welsh based training company that we’re doing some motivational training with but unfortunately their offices were closed because of the snow! It’s going to be a whole new experience for us working with them as we are designing some amazing courses especially for them – it’s proper bespoke and everything!
If you’d like to know a bit more about Educ8, please click on the link below:
http://www.educ8training.co.uk/
Last time we told you about the ‘Sing for Life’ project we’re working on with Tenovus which is being filmed for the telly. The Tenovus choir is made up of people whose lives have been touched in some way by cancer, some of the people in the choir have cancer and the point of the project is to see how singing can make a difference to people’s health. Depression, fatigue and anxiety are just a few of the things that can have an impact on people affected by cancer and we want to get everybody singing loudly!
The lovely Dave Westcott has written another great arrangement – this time it’s full of welsh songs as the choir may be performing at a gig on St David’s day, more to come on this in the next blog if it pans out. This project isn’t just about the singing and TV programme though, Cardiff University are doing a research project on it. This is one of the most personally inspiring projects we’ve ever worked on, the people are amazing and the singing is going to rock the Tenovus world!
More info on the project can be found at http://www.singforlife.org.uk/
Now it wouldn’t be a proper blog if we didn’t mention our first meeting of the year with the Admiral choir would it?! The Michael Jackson medley is still going strong and we’re getting better and better at it with every practice. We also started working on some new songs which the choir picked themselves – they came up with 90 yes nine zero suggestions so we’ve got plenty of song choices for 2010.
Sing and Inspire is not just about the singing though, at the end of the day we need to produce tangible results for the people we work with and prove our approach works. With that in mind we kept statistics about the choir and what they themselves felt about being part of the choir. The results are above and beyond what we expected and we’d like to share some of them with you.
It’s a good start that the choir members enjoy being a part of the choir!
- 100% of respondents look forward to the sessions
- 80% of respondents feel Inspire has helped them with their work
- 100% of respondents felt their customer service at work had improved
Motivation levels have remained high since the choir was formed, and the choirists felt that their confidence has increased since joining, they are generally more confident socially and within the choir environment.
The overall report summary states: Admiral has a group of employees who are clearly capable of high achievement. The challenge for Admiral is to replicate the same level of motivation and team spirit as is generated by being a member of the Inspire choir – “it’s a team effort and everyone enjoys their part”. Hopefully this will be fuelled by Inspire continuing to run and develop the choir. Given a task which is perceived as worthwhile, and a leadership which is energetic and charismatic, people feel motivated and inspired. They are not afraid of hard work and rise to a challenge if it is presented correctly; indeed they are even willing to take on additional responsibility. Having the choir practises in working hours gives people time out from the stresses of work, without eating into their personal time. Effects on retention and attendance rates in the workplace are also important; “I have been feeling quite ill recently but I refuse to take time off work as I don’t want to miss the choir”, “If it wasn’t for Inspire choir, I would probably leave.”
So there you have it! Another fab couple of weeks in the wonderful world of Sing and Inspire and a fantastic start to the New Year – we can’t wait to see what February brings! Have a positively marvellous week full of fun and laughter xx
