Stella’s Circle Inclusion Choir empowering: participants
Choir will perform at Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival
Anne Donovan feels that certain something when she’s standing with her choir, singing Johnny Reid’s “Today I’m Gonna Try and Change the World.” It’s that moment when a sound reaches to your core, or a simple lyric becomes a promise to yourself.
“It’s got a bit of meaning for me that way,” she said, speaking with The Telegram Thursday, noting the song has come up on occasion in practices and performances with the Stella’s Circle Inclusion Choir.
There are no auditions for the Inclusion Choir, no demands for past experience. The group is made up of about 35 people, all having had some association with Stella’s Circle, a community organization dedicated to bringing down barriers to safe housing, employment and full engagement in the community, through frontline services and programming.
The choir is without judgment, meeting about 40 times a year, when you count performances and practice sessions. Many members — Donovan included — didn’t think of themselves as singers when they first joined.
“For me, I’ve always been really shy, never kind of out front and public, kind of in the back. And the choir has given me the strength to kind of stand up and say, I can do this,” she said.
She remembers first giving it a go, attending a practice session four years ago, on a Wednesday night. The next scheduled choir performance was that Saturday. With a laugh, she recalled mouthing a lot of “watermelon, watermelon” when she forgot lyrics.
“I got through it and I’ve been going to performances ever since,” she said with a smile.
“It’s drawn me out of my shell. Now when I sing I stand up and sing right from my gut, and right from my heart.”
She’s not the only one. The choir’s membership includes people who have been through, or are still going through, potentially the greatest challenges of their lives.
It all began 10 years ago, with a slow start and practice sessions in the morning at the Hungry Heart Café (a Stella’s Circle social enterprise), before the café opened for the day. It was a simple idea of getting people together to sing, with the gathering itself promoting healing and social connection.
Rob Mclennan, the director of employment services at Stella’s Circle, said the choir began with a core belief: anyone can sing. Now, he told The Telegram, with about 100 performances over the last 10 years, it is: anyone can perform.
Led by volunteer director Helen Murphy, the first song the group pulled together was Peter, Paul and Mary’s “If I had a hammer.” They went on to adapt the tune in creating a song about affordable housing in St. John’s, called “If I had a grant.”
That became a signature piece, as the choir performed in promotion of the ideals of inclusion, in the name of overall supportive communities and the Stella’s Circle mission.
Mclennan said the choir was on hand for a wave of housing initiatives, performing at advisory committee meetings, a meeting of the Canadian Housing Renewal Association, housing-related conferences and, of course, on Prescott Street when the Brian Martin Housing Resource Centre was opened in 2009. The housing stock of the city increased by 18 affordable units, diagonal to the Hungry Heart Café, with Prince Charles on hand for the event.
“We were kind of the soundtrack for a lot of that stuff going on,” Mclennan said.
The choir has also performed along the way with Olympian Clara Hughes and with Johnny Reid.
Performances have often involved what Mclennan called message songs, and that label applies to a new song developed by the choir, with singer-songwriter Amelia Curran. The work has been reported on before, with the choir becoming the feature of a Roger Maunder film, with a special showing and performance at the LSPU Hall in April. But the song “Be the Change” will also be performed at this year’s Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival.
“It just touches the heartstrings of everybody. You can relate to it,” said choir member George Walsh, who joined in the choir’s early days, the second or third year, as he recalls. He stepped away for a while, but returned late last year, becoming a part of the Canada 150 project.
“It’s gotten more professional … on an emotional level, there’s not many can touch this choir,” he said.
For him, the song “Be the Change” never fails to put him in that moment.
“In times in your life, everyone struggles, but if you have the courage to fight through those struggles and not give up, there’s hope at the end of that. And that’s what ‘Be the Change’ is all about. When we perform now at Bannerman Park, people are going to feel that emotion, I believe,” he said.
The Stella’s Circle Inclusion Choir will be with Juno Awardwinner Amelia Curran on the TD Main Stage at the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival at Bannerman Park in St. John’s at 7:50 p.m. Friday.