Dumfries Community Choir

We’re one of the biggest community platform in the South of Scotland, and we work with our partners to use culture as means to improve the lives of our community who are experiencing high levels of social and rural isolation. As a unique social co-operative, we have over 170 voluntary members who contribute to our social model through volunteering, sponsorship or advocacy. Anyone can join our membership organisation. We have just taken over the Loreburn Hall in the centre of Dumfries which is a temporary cultural space, including an 80 seat cinema, 50 seat cabaret lounge, 50 seat black box theatre and a main hall with a capacity of 1200 Our work takes place in schools, residential homes, cafes, car parks, swimming pools and in all sorts of locations throughout our region. We believe that there are barriers that prevent members of our community taking part in culture and we do everything we can to deliver socially driven projects that help to improve the cultural health of our region through our seasons of projects which aim to increase resilience by connecting our community through our cultural programmes and services. Our signature projects include a diverse range of community arts based programmes and iconic place-making projects including our annual winter festival, Carlisle Fringe, Dumfries Carnival, Le Haggis, High Tea, Queer Haggis, Dumfries Youth Theatre, Dumfries Community Choir and Producers of the Future. Every year we deliver more than 300 shows across our festival programmes, as well as weekly community arts sessions to over 100 participants, creative industry training for emerging artists and the sector across Dumfries & Galloway, and traineeships in producing across our major projects. Our cultural skills development programme is one of the largest of its kind in the UK. At the centre of our work is the belief that we can use culture to connect people, we advocate that culture is good for our wellbeing and health, and that art is a form of human expression and creativity. Our network of over 100 associate artists and producers includes performance makers, producers, artists and collaborators who believe in the power of social change.