A Song of Welcome and Belonging

We had a wonderful project finale with students from Seymour Primary School at Diverse Crawley's World Day for Cultural Diversity event on Saturday 23rd May, where the children performed their own original song, 'Welcome Everyone', accompanied by our Ensemble Reza musicians.

The journey for this remarkable piece began in April, when the Diverse Crawley team ran a lively, interactive whole-school assembly introducing songs and stories from around the world, including Portugal, Barbados, Zimbabwe, and more specifically the Gumboot Dance from South Africa and the Perahera Festival in Sri Lanka.

Following the assembly, a class of students worked with our musicians to create a song based on the themes from the morning workshop. Almost immediately, 'Welcome' began to grow — drawing on over ten languages represented in the classroom. This was a truly student-directed piece, with both the words and melody created entirely by the class.

Over the coming weeks we ran two further sessions, refining and rehearsing the piece in preparation for the final performance.