Sutton Music Trust aims to help every young person to make, be inspired by, and celebrate the music they love. We champion all forms of music-making and ensure that all young people – no matter what barriers they may face – can access and perform the music that matters to them. Our choir, Supernova Singers (formally Sutton Autistic Youth Choir) aims to achieve this mission as a fully inclusive choir open to singers with varying special educational needs.
In 2023, Sutton Music Trust teamed up with the Cognus Autism Team to launch a new choir aimed at autistic children and young people in the London Borough of Sutton. The idea of the Sutton Autistic Youth Choir (SAYC) was to create a choir adapted to meet the needs of autistic singers and create a comfortable environment for them to enjoy singing together as a group. After a successful initial trial project, kindly supported by Wallington Library, the choir has continued to develop and grow and has enjoyed performing to an audience of friends and family at small end of term concerts. The Sutton Autistic Youth Choir end of term concerts have been well-received with positive feedback from parents, including “[the choir] helped them to feel free to be themselves and to be proud.”
Our Autistic Youth Choir have enjoyed informal end of term performances for carers/parents in the space that they currently rehearse in. As a next step, we plan to invite the choir to sing at one of our Sutton Music Trust end-of-term concerts in a local church. To prepare for this concert, we will invite the choir to attend a couple of rehearsals at the church to familiarise themselves with the space and acoustic to ensure that the singers are comfortable and confident performing on a larger platform.
As the choir has developed, we wanted to change the name to reflect the inclusive nature of the group as it is open to all children and young people with varying special educational needs. After consulting our Youth Forum, we decided on three names to be voted on at the Cognus Autism Family Day in April. The results were overwhelming, and we are thrilled to share the choirs new name with you all – Supernova Singers! The choir will be performing at our end of term concert on Thursday 3rd July at Carshalton Methodist Church – we hope to see you there!
I am absolutely thrilled to announce the new name which reflects the truly inclusive nature of our brilliant choir. Thank you to all of the staff involved in making this possible and for your continued hard work – the young singers of Sutton are incredibly lucky!
Want to get involved?
For more information about Supernova Singers and to sign up, please click here.
If you have any questions about the choir, please feel free to contact us: hello@suttonmusictrust.org.uk.
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