The Pink Singers are one of four shortlistees for the 2025 RPS Inspiration Award. We are welcoming public votes to choose the winner – voting is open until 11am on Monday 3 February 2025. The winner will be announced at the RPS Awards on Thursday 6 March at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
The Pink Singers are Europe’s oldest LGBTQ+ community choir. They perform a wide range of music genres, drawing from classical, pop, musical theatre, madrigals and more, with many arrangements which are created by choir members and performed with choreography. While very much a community choir, The Pink Singers strive for high performance standards, led by their music director Olivia Doust. As a registered charity, they exist to promote the love and appreciation of music among the LGBTQ+ community and to promote equality and raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in wider society. The Pink Singers are more than a choir: they are a passionate, driven and talented community, who provide a safe space for their members to be accepted as themselves.
In the last year, The Pink Singers celebrated their 40th anniversary and their inspiring story of queer singing and activism has been the focus of a podcast series Sing It Pink (featured in the Radio Times, The Guardian and on BBC Radio 6 Music). With the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the choir’s archives are being opened up to the public for the first time at the Bishopsgate Institute. The Pink Singers perform regularly at London’s Cadogan Hall, where they recently premiered a newly commissioned piece, Homemade Musical Hope Machine by composer Simon Pearson, drawing on lyrics inspired by the choir’s archives. Recent highlights also include performances at St Pancras Station to raise funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust, at Charlton Athletic as part of Football Against Homophobia, the Natural History Museum, British Summer Time Festival, Camden Pride, and Hand in Hand choir festival of LGBTQ+ choirs in Bristol. They also marched at Pride in London, featured in the Transport for London Pride campaign, and collaborated with Ballet in the Park – an LGBTQ+ open access ballet community. Their 40th anniversary gala event included the premiere screening of a documentary about the choir, A Magical Journey of Queerness.
‘Singing in The Pink Singers is something that I love and I need. Some of us go through quite a lot to get to where we are, and the power of community and music has supported me more than ever across this past year, when I have needed it the most. It’s more than a choir to me. It’s a chosen family.’
Keri (she/her), alto
‘I’ve never been a part of a choir that wasn’t gendered before and that felt really special. In my first season we sang a song called The Village about a trans masculine experience, and as we were rehearsing the piece for the first time, I thought ‘What is happening? This song is about me!’. It hadn’t occurred to me that there was such a song, or that we would be singing trans music. The lyrics were so resonant to me. It’s really powerful to be in a room with everybody singing music that speaks to your experience.’
Ev (they/them), tenor
The RPS Inspiration Award is generously supported by Presto Music.
