Our Core Values
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Everyone can sing, we're all at a different point in our learning.
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When it comes to accessibility: everybody can or nobody can.
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Everyone has a valuable contribution to make.
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We keep it local for services we use.
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We consider environmental consequences before taking action.
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All Simply Singing spaces are judgement free.
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Absolutely everyone is included.
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Affordability doesn't affect who can access our services.
What Is A CIC
A community interest company (CIC) is a social enterprise. We are a limited company, but we are limited by guarantee not by shares. This means we are not beholden to profit, we are driven by our core values.
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Any profit made by Simply Singing CIC goes back into projects in the community, bringing singing for health, wellbeing and connection to as many people as we can.
Louise Johnston & Alice Shearn
Alice and Louise founded Simply Singing in 2010 with a simple but powerful belief: that singing belongs to everyone. As a Community Interest Company, Simply Singing has spent over fifteen years running choirs and workshops that bring people together, improve wellbeing, and build genuine community connection.
Between them, Alice (BA Popular Music and Recording) and Louise (BA Music), both graduates of the University of Salford, bring a breadth of musical experience spanning popular, jazz and classical music — but what really defines their work is the way they work together. Fiercely inclusive and relentlessly welcoming, they've spent their careers breaking down the idea that music is only for the talented or trained. Over the years they've worked with hundreds of participants across a wide range of settings, including vulnerable adults, children, and people living with mental and physical health conditions.
Simply Singing works because Alice and Louise do. Their partnership — equal, complementary, and genuinely joyful — is at the heart of everything they've built.
Emma Wheeler
Emma is a choir leader, singing teacher and performer whose musical life is rooted in a genuine love of bringing people to singing. She holds a BMus and an MMus, both from the Royal Northern College of Music, and works as a Practice Assistant at Chetham's School of Music — one of the UK's leading specialist music schools.
Emma has been part of the Simply Singing team since her undergraduate days, and has grown alongside the organisation into a confident, experienced choir leader. She leads several Simply Singing choirs on a weekly basis and runs choirs of her own outside of Simply Singing. As a performer, she appears in opera productions at summer festivals, bringing a professional performance career alongside her teaching and community work.
Her Simply Singing sessions are warm, vibrant and open to everyone — exactly the kind of space she's always believed singing should be.
Áine Mallon
Áine Mallon is an award-winning, Irish-born composer whose music engages with the fundamental human experience of storytelling. Rooted in tradition yet distinctly her own, her work has earned recognition from distinguished organisations across Ireland and the UK, including selection as an Emerging Composer 2020/2021 with the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland, where she now holds the status of Associate Composer. Áine is supported by both the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Arts Council England.
"Traditional yet fresh and new." — John Rutter CBE
As a composer, Áine brings a rare depth of musical imagination to everything she does — and that same quality is felt in her work with Simply Singing, where she leads one of our community choirs. Her sessions reflect her belief in music as a fundamentally human experience, making her a natural fit for the Simply Singing community.
Jess Howell
Jess is a photographer and marketer for small businesses & independents. She focuses on candid photography to help people build their brand, and community-driven marketing to help them promote it.
She's been busy behind the scenes promoting our Altrincham choir, Simply Voices and our new venture, Sup & Sing Club. Her work helps us get Simply Voices in front of the right people, and gives our choirs the spotlight they deserve.
Although Jess's background is mainly in marketing and comms, she spent many years in her youth learning violin and singing, so is always happy to get involved in belting out a tune at our events.
Cheryl Patricia Walker
Cheryl is a BSL interpreter and performer whose career brings together two lifelong passions: performance and sign language. After graduating with a Diploma in Media and Performance, she spent several years building a career as a performer before training as a BSL interpreter — a move that turned out to be the perfect combination of everything she loves.
Cheryl now works as a BSL interpreter and sign-song artist across a wide range of productions, from drama and musicals to pantomime, with theatres across the North West and Central Wales. She is a valued part of the Simply Singing team, interpreting at many of our events and bringing an extra dimension of accessibility and artistry to everything she's involved in.
Passionate about making sign-song accessible to everyone, Cheryl also runs her own YouTube channel and Facebook group, offering support and inspiration to anyone who wants to give it a go.