My community sings...

Streetwise Opera’s founder Matt Peacock on what a little opera can do

Streetwise Opera began following a comment by an MP in the 1990s that, “the homeless are the people you step over when you come out of the opera house”. At the time, I was a key worker at a night shelter and this comment created some strong feeling with the residents. They felt they needed to respond, and the best way of doing this was by performing in an opera themselves. This idea grew into Streetwise Opera and, eight years on, the charity runs a music programme in 11 homeless centres across England and our current production, My Secret Heart, has had a worldwide audience of 125,000.

POSITIVE RESULTS

As you can imagine, we get a mixed response when we run opera workshops in homeless centres and we have to work very hard to get people through the door in the first place. The word ‘opera’ can have intimidating connotations, but that is often because of the fear of the unknown. Once participants are hooked there is no going back and opera has always been the most popular musical genre in our work. Added to this, opera opens doors – our work is all about showing people gently, but firmly, what they can achieve despite many people, including themselves, feeling that they offer little. Very few of our participants think they will be able to star in an opera, but the vast majority do. This opens doors for them where they realise that if they can do this, what else can they achieve? Clearly this could be achieved with other interventions outside the arts, but singing adds another dimension – an extra spark that ignites this process, changing people from shadows to walking tall on stage in front of 2,500 people.

We often use a case study of John*, an alcoholic who attended a homeless centre every day to have lunch. He rarely spoke and would not engage in any other service. After three months, he started to show an interest in our work and agreed to help backstage at one of our productions. We gave him free tickets and he used them to invite his family who he had not seen in 10 years. His daughters came to the show and he met his granddaughter for the first time. Following on from this, he started doing voluntary work at the centre he had visited daily.

REGULAR ACTIVITY

At the heart of our activity is regularity; everyone is familiar with the sense of loss after a big project and for people who are vulnerable, this is magnified. It is therefore essential that our productions are followed by regular activities so the day after the final performance is the beginning of something, not the end. Regularity means that people with chaotic lifestyles can find structure – not only rough sleepers but also those who have been rehoused. Many are rehoused into areas they don’t know and have no community links. These people often move back into homelessness because they can’t cope with the responsibilities of a flat. It is this group for whom the regularity of singing sessions is like a life raft in a turbulent, ever-changing sea.

The difference with singing is that it has so many positive ingredients – a combined emotional and physical response that invokes happiness, building confidence and self-esteem; it creates support through group activity, can be a huge leveller and shows people their achievements through working on something that can be challenging. Group singing is inspiring, encouraging, enriching and enabling.

Matt Peacock has worked in the arts industry as a singer and journalist. He sits on the Conservative Party Homelessness Advisory Panel and is one of 30 social activists profiled in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s book, Britain’s Everyday Heroes.

Take note

My Secret Heart is on tour. See www.mysecretheart.co.uk and www.streetwiseopera.org for more details.

* name changed to protect identity.