A Christmas song about what Christmas means to us all!

 

For more than a year, students from CFS have been visiting the elderly residents of Kingswood Manor Care Home as part of their Equipped to Serve programme. We have been getting to know the residents, enjoying hearing their memories and sharing our interests with them. At the start of this term, the Y11 ETS students were challenged to take some music written by Ian Forshaw, the regional manager of Harbour Healthcare (the care home group of which Kingswood is part) and use it as a starting point for their own song about what Christmas means to old and young. We worked together with Jill Smith, the Activities Co-ordinator of Kingswood Manor, who gathered memories from the residents about Christmas past, and worked with the Y11 students of CFS to create the lyrics for the first part of the song. The next verses and sung poetry were developed by CFS students from Year 11, while the CFS worship band set to work developing the music, led by our music teacher, Mrs Virr. A former CFS parent, Simonne Dale, worked with all three choirs involved in the song - from CFS, Kingswood Manor and Springwood Heath Primary - and with incredible generosity, Ian arranged for us to record the single at Parr Street studios. 

 

Ian inspired our young people to think about extending the blessing of our collaboration even further and we have set up a JustGiving page to raise money for homeless projects in Liverpool. We were thrilled to discover that a key volunteer at the one of these projects is a former CFS pupil! Check out our JustGiving page to see more about our song and the homeless projects we are supporting. 

 

Every day in December, we are posting a memory from one of our Kingswood Manor friends to take you back to Christmas past. 

 

Our song - It's more than . . . will be on iTunes and Spotify from 1st December 2017 so you can download it to your mobile devices. You can hear the song and see some footage of our day at the recording studios by clicking on the link below. Do share it widely with your family and friends. 

 

It was an amazing experience for our students to record their own music in a professional recording studio. As one of the Y11 students said: " We went to Kingswood Manor with no other idea than to befriend the older people and hopefully be a blessing to them - but the result has been that we have received so much back." We are very grateful for the links we have been able to forge within our local community and the opportunities our young people are having to make a positive difference.