We only win when we’re singing

When we’re milling around, trying to look busy, it’s tense. Then we get a huge release once everyone starts singing. Loudly. Together.

“Time to drop BP, don’t take their money” was our refrain at the British Museum. To the Space Odyssey theme tune. It sounded fabulous in the huge hall, and got both tourists and security guards smiling straight away. 

Our flashmobs have also taken us into St Paul’s Cathedral, the House of Commons and the AGMs of several dirty companies. We’ve also been heard outside a prison, on the banks of the River Wye, and in the street on big marches. 

I’ve marched, occupied, picketed, and more since the 1990s. Trying to stop new roads, new wars, the excesses of globalisation, and a Murdoch media take-over. Also a fair amount on climate – from disrupting a G7 leaders press conference back in John Major days, through standing on a bus 10 years ago to urge a large London march to quietly contemplate what they love about this planet and its people. 

I’ve often chanted as loud as I can, but I’d never imagined protesting in four-part harmony. When one of the Climate Choir founders invited me round for a cuppa and asked: “are you tenor or bass?”, I didn't even know the answer. But when she turned to the piano and got a song going, I joined in and soon found out (bass). 

I’ve always sung songs while cycling, cooking, pretty much anything. But it’s something totally different and amazing to do it with a hundred or more other like-minded people. 

We haven’t won any musical awards, but our passion and emotion sure shine through. 

In February we were singing outside the Bristol University Students Union, as part of a campaign to encourage people to switch away from banks that fund new fossil fuel projects. Minutes after we arrived, rain poured down. We kept going, earning stunned looks from passers by. The KPop Demon Hunter tune was well-chosen for the audience, and the lyrics slightly bizarre – including tricky sequences naming good and bad banks, and a final line: “say no thanks to fossil banks, with the account switch guarantee”!

The songs are brilliantly arranged, written, and taught by our music director Kai Honey. Audio files help us practice at home, and it’s very supportive: nobody gets a hard time for missing a note, forgetting a word or anything like that. 

Passers-by get drawn to join in – like when we were part of a huge crowd marching up Whitehall as part of Extinction Rebellion’s Big One march in 2023. One of our songs that day was “Let Us Stand”, a defiant and positive folky number which continues “as we face the coming storm, for we love this land, let’s work for a better dawn”. 

We were back in the centre of national power soon after that, singing “I'm Loving Nature Instead” to the tune of Robbie Williams’ Angels at a rally in Parliament Square. And then “Stop Rosebank" to the tune of Hallelujah Chorus both inside and outside the House of Commons. That one was especially exciting. As we were escorted to the exit, singing all the way, we got thumbs up from several MPs and staff members. 

We tend to get more frosty looks when we’re out and about singing in the City of London. We’ve sung at various bank AGMs, and in the heart of London’s insuranceland. You can see some people enjoying the music, but they mostly turn their eyes away. 

As the prospects of climate breakdown loom larger, we may need more singing, in the City and everywhere. 

Art Cure, a new book by Professor Daisy Fancourt, spells out how any kind of creative expression does wonders for both mental and physical health. And singing with others, in harmony, is said to be even better than most other forms. 

Researchers at Goldsmiths have found that singing ‘tickles’ a part of your brain that registers pleasure, and that: “singing along facilitates the formation of temporary neo-tribes”.

That may be why many of the other choir participants – even ones that I only see every few months at national actions – now feel like old friends. 

In a context where more and more people are understandably anxious about the future, maybe one day more people will be prescribed choir membership, even climate choir membership. To pull in sceptical activists, we could adapt Gramsci: “The pessimism of the thought, the optimism of the will sing”. 

Troops in the trenches sang to pack up their troubles, or to air their feelings about their plight (think: “we’re here because we’re here, because we’re here because we’re here”). 

And academic Martha Newsom has studied how tough times for football fans bond the fans more than good times do. At one of the last matches I went to, distressed away fans launched into a cynical-yet-jaunty “we had a shot, we had a shot, we had a shot” 70 minutes into a match. The shot was saved, as was the mood.

Several other studies, as summarised by Brigid Ó Coileáin, show how singing was part of the human experience long before talking, and how it releases a flood of helpful brain chemicals which reduce stress and anxiety.

In the Climate Choir, we team up with ongoing campaigns and do our best to boost their strategies. Sometimes our songs go viral online – our Barclays AGM clip got 2.2 million views on TikTok, and our train station thoughts on Rosebank late last year went well on Insta! Neither we nor anyone really know what it will take to get powerful companies and governments to phase out fossil fuels, but seeing the Climate Choir Movement grow and spread around the country, and even abroad, has kept me going in these darkening times.

A few weeks ago, several of us from the Climate Choir joined the Singing Resistance section of the Together march against the far right. That section of the march assembled people from various political choirs. We sang the same songs (like Hold On and We Belong To Each Other) that the brave and determined people of Minneapolis have been singing this winter, and that many were singing that same day across the US as part of the No Kings mobilisation.   

And for me the Climate Choir has been a gateway drug for another choir. I’ve joined another one that reworks and performs tracks by artists like Blondie, Daft Punk, Muse and Self Esteem. Just for the hell of it. And we followed up the last performance with our own type of flashmob – putting smiles on loads of faces in the pub. 

The Climate Choir Movement rehearses in 17 places across England and Wales. Find your nearest one, and see some videos of our performances .

Elsewhere in Absurdity

Most of us were in Swansea at the weekend for Ffair Cymru and we had The Best Time with the brilliant crews at Urban HQ and Volcano Theatre. We’ll be writing about that in the next edition of Byline Times, so take out your subscription!

Straight after we did what any self-respecting culturally-minded anarcho-organisers would do and headed over the road for an evening of anti-racist punk! Here’s Newport teens Hairdye:

Then we pegged it back to the smoke for a date with You Are Here, Danny Boyle’s one-day takeover of the Southbank Centre, 75 years to the day after the Festival of Britain was opened by King George VI. A most Fête-like experience! 👏

And if that wasn’t enough 🙄

Clare addressed the third Amsterdam Complexity School on Climate Change.

Stella went to help Dash Arts in their rehearsal for Our Public House.

John worked with the Modal Foundation and Clara Maguire on their AT Protocol based social media platform.

David co-ran a workshop on ‘city-scale adaptation’ with the Sustainability Accelerator at Chatham House, and

Gen co-ran an alternative St George’s Day celebration gig with South East Queer choir and Lips choir – celebrating our lord and saviour, George Michael.

😅