Swindon Scratch Choir was born in 2000 when Linda wanted to join a community choir in Swindon but couldn’t find one!  She was inspired by the Bristol Gasworks Choir, where there is more than one leader teaching song parts.  This speeds up the learning process and means no hanging around waiting for others to learn their part!

The Scratch Choir has gone from strength to strength and has spawned many offshoots including a Tuesday afternoon group and Cirencester Community Choir.  The Choir is often invited to sing at various events around the borough and those that take part find it great fun.

Current Choir Leaders include:

Linda Lee
Has a great love of harmony and is a Natural Voice Practitioner of many years experience.  Apart from community choirs and running singing workshops, she has done specialised singing work for Community and Mental Health Services in Wiltshire and Berkshire and The Alzheimer’s Society (Singing for the Brain).  She also plays guitar, ukulele and harmonica in her spare time.

Martin Hawes
A singer who has been a leader since the Choir first formed.  Martin is also a percussion player adding a groove to some of our some of our African songs.

Vicky Sweeney
An enthusiastic natural voice practitioner who has trained with Frankie Armstrong, Vicky is also a leader of the local Singing for the Brain (Alzheimer’s Society) group and has been a co-worker in providing singing sessions for specialised services in Wiltshire and Berkshire.  She has been a driving force in setting up the Cirencester Community Choir.

Mandy Parsons
Was a originally leading percussion groups until being bitten by the community choir bug.  She has worked extensively in the community doing singing and rhythm sessions as well as leading our local Singing for the Brain group.

Pete Parsons
His deep resonant bass has been a great asset to the choir in recent times.  Pete was originally a drum workshop leader and has a great love of African songs.

Kate Rowe
Has been a leader with us for some time and brings a lot to the choir with her extensive musical knowledge and joy of singing.

We are grateful for additional help from Jean Cleary – supreme soprano, and recently, the sweet-voiced Liz Needham.

Collectively we call ourselves  ‘InVoice’  and operate as a teaching and performing group who all share the same aim – to bring the joy of singing to everyone!