Concert Seals Wonderful Collaboration Between Kings College And Orpheus Charity

Published on: 21 Oct, 2013
Updated on: 21 Oct, 2013

King College in Park Barn hosted a wonderful concert on Friday afternoon (October 18), featuring students from the school and from the Orpheus centre in Godstone.

All smiles at the end of a brilliant concert!

The concert, entitled Songbird, was the culmination of five days of intensive, heartfelt and thoroughly enjoyable songwriting between a number of students at Kings College and some of the residents of Orpheus, a supported housing scheme whereby young disabled adults have access to a diverse curriculum of performing arts, independence, functional and life skills.

Orpheus was set up in 1988 by Sir Richard Stilgoe – the well known TV presenter and songwriter and who has contributed lyrics for musicals such as Cats, Starlight Express and Phantom Of The Opera.

Sir Richard Stilgoe leads the performers while getting the audience to participate in some singing and hand actions.

As well as playing keyboards during the concert, Sir Richard introduced it by making the point that in a school environment people are always being told to be quiet. He said: “Being able to perform a concert is a nice change from being told to ‘shut up!’ – the applause you can get is terrific. It’s a good positive thing.”

And so the concert began with a rap titled Hold Us Down. The audience were then treated to all kinds of songs, from ballads to sing-along tunes, all with lyrics which both sets of students had written themselves. Titles included Me, Myself and I, Looking At The Moon, How Do You Manage To Smile, and Yo Gonna Be The Best I Can.

The dance routine performed by sixth-formers at Kings College.

The concert also featured a dance performance by students from Kings.

In the audience were the High Sheriff of Surrey, Dr Helen Bowcock; the Deputy Mayor of Guildford, David Elms and his wife Wendy; representatives from Guildford Grove and George Abbot Schools; county councillor Fiona White; parents and friends of those performing, and school staff.

Songs featured were written over five days of working together.

Orpheus has previously run this project with prisons – hence the name Songbird (as oppose to jailbird), and the project with Kings College was made available with generous financial support from the Monument Trust and The Funding Network. This financed the help of expert professional musicians – the multi-instrumentalist Bing Lyle and rap tutor Emmanuel Imuere.

It was a wonderful uplifting concert and Kings’ music teacher Emma Sykes was delighted with the hard work put into the project by her GCSE music students and those from the school’s physically disabled centre. After the concert she was thanked for her input and presented with a bunch of red roses.

Kings College website.

Orpheus Centre website.