A heart-warming community singing project involving primary school aged boys and girls from Monmouth lit up the Blake Theatre on Friday (22nd March).

Around 150 children from Osbaston, Overmonnow and Kymin View primary schools, Monmouth School Boys’ Prep and Monmouth School Girls’ Prep created a massed choir of voices for the second year in a row.

The successful Friday Afternoons singing project led by Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools has been declared an overwhelming success.

North Monmouthshire Music Centre’s foundation and junior orchestras were involved along with Gwent Music Abergavenny Primary Schools Orchestra.

Monmouth’s Got Talent winners - Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools’ musicians Carys Davies, Charlie Walker and Anna Vines, who took the senior prize, and William Chalk, a pianist from Osbaston, the junior winner, also performed.

Mr Joe Walton and Mr Mike Steer, Music teachers at Monmouth School Boys’ Prep and Monmouth School Girls’ Prep, who ran the project, said: "We wanted to give the children an experience of the real joy of singing and music-making using suitable music that had been recently composed."

The pupils joined together for a term of singing in the new Performing Arts Centre at Monmouth School for Girls, which culminated in last week’s outstanding concert, watched by more than 500 people.

The Friday Afternoons singing initiative was inspired by English composer, Benjamin Britten, and launched nationally in 2013.

The scheme’s song bank contains new music and support material to help teachers develop their students’ skills - as performers, listeners and composers.

The Monmouth concert included the delightful Rice and Beans (Wallen), This is the Bird (Dove), From a Railway Carriage (Muhly), Snow (Dove), It was a lover and his lass (Wallen) and was rounded off in style with Fire (Dove).