Introducing the Alliance

Watch this blog post here.

Hello, friends

This post introduces a brand new organization, the Global Alliance of Queer Choirs. It explains who we are and what we aim to do.

My name is Charlie Beale, and I am a committed internationalist, and a choral conductor, and I’ve just spent the last 25 years leading activist choirs both in London and New York. So I can tell you at first hand how, through the simple act of singing, choirs can transform the lives of LGBTIQ+ people, connecting them with others, creating powerful and transforming change in their neighborhoods, locally, regionally and internationally.

Are there many queer choirs out there?

If you are new to our movement or perhaps only know about it through the singing in your region, you should know that there are many hundreds of queer choirs all over the world, and that number is growing all the time. From Fiji and East Timor to Bulgaria, Japan, Canada and Mexico, new queer choirs are springing up all over the world, getting together and singing for change.

What’s unique about our work is not only that we sing well, but also that we sing with purpose. We sing about our lives, we sing to create community, and we also sing to campaign, unceasingly, for equal rights for LGBTIQ+ equality all over the world.

What will the new Global Alliance do?

So what exactly is the new Global Alliance and what do we intend to do? Well, central to our work is a monthly meeting that takes place on Zoom and brings together representatives of five of the major regional organizations in queer choral singing worldwide.

That meeting provides a forum for information exchange and the sharing of new ideas. We discuss festival dates, we devise new projects, for example, and we facilitate international collaborations, both across regions and between individual choirs.

Our Steering Group

Five regional organizations are represented on our Steering Group, and they are:

Legato, the European Association of LGBTQ+ Choirs, which encompasses 128 choirs from 20 countries.

Then Proud Voices Asia, which is a network of LGBT choirs in Asia, stretching from Turkey in the west all the way to Singapore in the east, and covering choirs in many countries, including mainland China, India, South Korea and Japan.

Third, GALA Choruses, which leads the North American choral movement, and includes around 190 more choirs.

Then Unison Choruses Canada, which leads the Canadian movement.

Then last but by no means least, Out & Loud Choirs, which is a brand new regional organization showcasing LGBTQ+ choirs from across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Timor Leste.

Supporting festivals

All five of these organizations have a lot in common. They all present major choral festivals every few years in their different regions of the world, and they also provide other activities for their choirs, including meetings, seminars, conferences and symposiums. We plan that our Steering group will also include other leading figures from across the queer choral movement worldwide, along with other regional organizations who’d like to be involved.

Equity and inclusion is obviously a core part of our work, and we will be ensuring that no one organization has a stronger voice than any other, and all will have a seat at the table.

Facilitating global collaboration

Through our meetings and the projects we will devise in future years, we aim to strengthen the relationships between these choirs and regional organizations, and to support rather than duplicate their work.

Over time, we also hope to encourage the development of new choirs and organizations, in parts of the world where the LGBTIQ++ struggle rights is real. In some of those places, it can still be dangerous to come out, let alone be in a choir, and support for queer choral singing is, of course, still in its infancy.

Sharing the latest information

Above all, though, we want the Global Alliance to be an information hub and a forum for the exchange and dissemination of the very latest ideas and thinking around queer choral singing.

A fresh international perspective

We are a brand new organization, with a lot of energy and ideas. In the next few videos, blog posts and social media posts, we will be providing a space for all the regional organizations to introduce themselves, and to share what they do with the wider world. We want to provide a fresh (and we believe much needed) international perspective on the work of our movement.

For now, our call to action is simple. Sign up to our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds @queerchoirs for the latest information about upcoming festivals around the world, and highlights of what is going in the world of global queer choral singing.

Thanks for reading, and of course, keep singing for change.