Commoners Choir was built on a Manifesto.

It was an idea, or a set of ideas, before there were any choristers and before there were any songs. 

MaNIFESTO

• This will be a choir unlike any other.
• We won't do covers of popular songs. Or of unpopular songs, come to that.
• We'll sing in usual and unusual places; in concert halls, at festivals, on demonstrations, on mountaintops, at cabarets, in churches, in galleries and museums, anywhere with an audience and a reason to sing.
• We'll rehearse until we're brilliant.
• We'll share out the organising, share ideas about how we operate, and share a responsibility for the choir.
• We'll sing about the world around us, about inequality and unfairness, and about the things that need changing. The words we sing will be angry and clever, but we'll sing them with as much harmony, melody and earworms as we can muster!
• We'll be disciplined and organised.
• Rehearsals and concerts will be a mixed-up uneven balance of hard work and laughter.
• We'll be explicitly political and committed to what we sing about.  
• We'll make albums and videos, we'll be involved in projects and collaborations, and we'll make sure to shout about ourselves whenever possible.
• We'll be peculiar, memorable, feisty, celebratory, witty, angry and welcoming.

2015