Nottingham Refugee Week is now well established with over forty events held across the city In June. The week is a festival of music, theatre, dance, film, literature, art, food and sport celebrating the contribution of refugees to Nottingham. Nottingham Clarion Choir contributed through a performance at the Launch event in the Council House Ballroom on Monday 18th June and through organising a Workshop and Street Performance on Saturday 23rd June.

Over 70 people joined together at the Friends Meeting House to sing songs calling for justice for refugees. Together we learned songs by Boff Whalley, “Citizen's Shanty” and “Three Boats” , together with “Famba Naye/It Could Be Me”, a Zimbabwean song with words by Bronwyn Westacott, who led the workshop. These moving and uplifting songs brought home the tragedy of so many deaths in the Mediterranean and the important message that we share a common destiny as “citizen's of the world”.

Following the Workshop we all took up banners and placards, challenging the lies and misinformation about refugees, and marched through Nottingham to perform together at the Brian Clough statue.

The event also celebrated the Nottingham Clarion Choir's 30th Anniversary with a simple message: we are still out there singing for justice.

Watch and listen to an extract of the performance here

We were very pleased to be asked to sing at the launch of Refugee Week at the Council House in Nottingham on Monday, 18 June 2018. The Choir was also proud to sing songs which support the theme of the struggles refugees encounter when leaving their homelands, travelling dangerously over land and sea, sometimes trafficked, then arriving on foreign shores, lonely, bewildered and feeling they have no rights and no-one to turn to when things get tough.

The songs we sang at this event were part of the Choir’s planned theme for Justice this year and included: ‘I want Rosa to Stay’; ‘Deportees’ (the words to this were written by Woodie Guthrie who became very angry when he heard about the tragedy of deportees from the USA who were killed in an aircrash. American radio reported the names of the crew of the plane but referred to other passengers as ‘just deportees’); ‘We Need Each Other Now’ (showing how our similarities are more important than our differences); ‘Finlandia – Song of Peace’, (based on the music of Sibelius with words by Lloyd Stone, an anthem acknowledging the love everyone has for the country they were born and grew up in and by inference, how difficult it is to leave the country you love); and We Shall Not Give Up the Fight’, (a song from the Apartheid struggle in South Africa, which is still so relevant today in seeking justice and freedom for all).

Needless to say, the Clarion Choir, received a great reception on the night, a wonderful reward for the hard work, choir members had put in to learn and practice the songs specifically for the event.

Our 30th year is themed around justice. What better way to express that than to support the Palestinian cause. Nottingham PSC gathered on 12th May in the Ukrainian Comrades Club for a part fundraiser, part celebration of the rich Palestinian culture of the diaspora. Young Palestinian dancers from London and Sheffield amazed with their energy. They tried to teach the assembled throng with as much success as a local Ceilidh band. Food was shared. The Clarion choir dusted off the Palestinian set along with a few more general numbers promising to keep up the valiant struggle for justice.