Review

Change

Community

Joy

Music

24 March 2025

6 min read

Sing it out with James Partridge’s joyous assembly

Bad days gets better when we sing together.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

A pianist sits at a keyboard singing on a stage.

For the first time, in a long time, I can honestly say that last Friday night, I gave it large. I was at a singalong show at the Cheltenham Playhouse, with hundreds of other people belting out the words to some well-known and well-loved songs.

As an actor-turned-vicar, I am one of life’s unusual people for whom singing is a normal and expected part of life. Yet still, I was taken by surprise by what a truly fabulous evening I had, singing gustily along with hundreds of people I didn’t know.

Seen & Unseen’s Belle Tindall wrote an article some time ago about the power of Jacob Collier’s concerts to make strangers feel a sense of belonging. I’ve not been to one, but I feel like I went to a lower brow version of that on Friday night.

I went to James B. Partridge’s Primary School Assembly Bangers Live Show. Which is almost certainly more mainstream and on trend than you think. He arrived on many of our radars when he took Glastonbury by storm last year, but he’s also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe 2024, Latitude, and The Big Feastival. He has been featured on BBC’s The One Show, and ITV’s Loose Women. He featured live on ITV News and on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2. His online videos have been written about in The Times, The Independent, Buzzfeed and featured in a number of podcasts. And now he’s even got a mention on Seen & Unseen…

For those of you who still have no idea what I’m talking about, let me take you back to Lockdown. Which may be triggering for some, and for that I apologise. Mr Partridge is a primary school music teacher and during Lockdown, he was trying to bring some joy into the lives of the children that he was still trying to teach online. And indeed, into the lives of their parents. He put some “Assembly Bangers” on YouTube, and the videos went viral; they just made people feel better by singing along. And so, it began.

Partridge is a great musician and all-round showman – he knew exactly how to play his audience – who were, by the way, really up for it. Some had even come prepared with fruit shakers and triangles to play. I kid you not. Although the bulk of his playlist were indeed Assembly Bangers, the nostalgic singalong extended beyond the Assembly Hall. He played a couple of bars of the intro and the entire theatre burst into the theme song of 90s Australian soap opera Home and Away. He delighted us with a medley of Alan Menkin’s Disney classics from The Little Mermaid through to Tangled. I even got involved in the SClub7 mash up. Get me.

Partridge told lots of great stories and anecdotes in between songs and one stuck in the mind. He’d recently received a message on Instagram from a woman who had had an accident in her early 20s and, because of brain damage, had lost all memory of her childhood. Until she listened to some of his Assembly Bangers. Through reconnecting with some of the songs she had sung at Primary School, memories attached to those songs started to come back. Amazing. Beautiful.

This is a widely known phenomenon. Music – and specifically singing – is increasingly becoming a feature of dementia care because, in trials, it has proved powerful in sparking memories, often long after other forms of communication have diminished.

There’s also research proving that singing releases endorphins – serotonin and dopamine – the ‘happy’ chemicals that boost your mood and make you feel good about yourself. Singing in the shower or with a hairbrush/microphone is, apparently, genuinely good for you.

At the same time, we all know that, if you can get over your self-consciousness, singing is a fantastic communal activity. Just go to a football match or a karaoke bar to find the proof. And the good news is, it doesn’t matter whether you think you can sing in tune or not: apparently the health benefits will still be the same. Although possibly not for those standing next to you.

With all this in mind, it’s interesting to note that much of the greatest classical music ever written (for choirs and orchestras) was composed in worship of the Christian God. Handel, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Hayden all churned out the bangers of their time. In the same tradition, John Newton, Charles Wesley, Matt Redmond, Chris Tomlin and Stuart Townend – all have written songs that have helped us, over many generations, to lift our eyes and our souls in song.

The saying, "the one who sings, prays twice," attributed to St. Augustine, helps us understand something about the spiritual power of singing and how it takes our words to the next level. There is something “more” happening when we sing; our whole being is connected, somehow; it’s physical, mental and spiritual all at once.

The Bible is full of songs and exhortations to God’s people to sing in praise of their God – because it’s good for us. As with so much cutting-edge psychological research, we are only catching up with what has been found in the Bible for thousands of years.

Sunday by Sunday in churches around the world, Christians sing songs. Songs that teach or remind us about who God is, songs that lift our souls and minds away from the cares and trials of our lives and the state of the world. Songs that take our eyes off ourselves and transport us into a place of worship. Songs that connect our memories of the past with God’s promises for the future. We sing to join together; we sing to join with the choir of Heaven and experience something of the Kingdom of God that we can all too easily miss otherwise. This is powerful stuff.

Singing along with James Partridge, the Assembly Bangers ranged from the obvious Morning has Broken and All Things Bright and Beautiful to songs steeped more deeply in Christian-ness, such as Give me Oil in my Lamp and Colours of Day (Open the door/let Jesus return[…] Tell the people of Jesus, let his love show).

For the big finale, Partridge took a vote, and the clear winner was Graham Kendrick’s beloved banger, Shine Jesus Shine. Funnily enough, the Sunday morning before this Friday night, I had thought of Graham Kendrick. As I pressed play on a CD player in a tiny medieval church in a tiny Cotswold village, I thought how Kendrick probably wouldn’t have anticipated Shine Jesus Shine to lift such ancient rafters. But he almost certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be sung by hundreds of theatre-going people who probably haven’t been anywhere near a church in years, if ever.

By the end of James B. Partridge’s Primary School Assembly Bangers Live Show, I have to say I felt brilliant. I had had a bad day and somehow the joy of singing had made me feel better. The joy of singing with other people and making a shared noise, singing words of prayer and praise as loudly and as freely as my lungs could support, just made me feel better. If you can get tickets, I heartily recommend catching the tail end of his sell out tour so you can experience it for yourself. It’s a bizarre event, a glorious mish mash of secular and sacred but one that the church can learn from and which I can’t help thinking makes God smile.

By way of Epilogue, as we all poured out of the theatre, and towards our cars, I heard a gaggle of strangers-become-friends skipping across the car park singing,

Flow, river, flow

Flood the nations with grace and mercy,

Send forth Your word,

Lord, and let there be light.

To which I say a happy and hearty Amen…

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Article

Comment

Community

Migration

Politics

20 May 2025

5 min read

Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ rhetoric is risky and wrong

The Prime Minister needs an English lesson.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A prime minister stands next to an Albanian police officer in front of a ferry.

Border control. Starmer in Albania.

X.com/10DowningSt.

In a recent speech launching the UK government’s white paper on immigration, Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed concern that the country risks becoming an “island of strangers.” It is a compelling phrase - yet, for many, a deeply worrying one. Some argue it echoes Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which the then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton claimed that people in the UK were being “made strangers in their own country”. Even if the reference was unintentional, the sentiment is divisive and dangerous. Here are five reasons why this narrative must be challenged.

Geography: We are fundamentally connected

First and foremost, the United Kingdom is not a single island. To describe it as such is not only geographically inaccurate but symbolically unhelpful and politically careless. This sort of language risks excluding all those UK citizens who live in the other 6,000 islands that make up our country - islands such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland and the Channel Islands, as well as the 2 million UK citizens who live in Northern Ireland. Many of our families, mine included, are testament to the fact that between the British Isles there are connections and marriages. We are islands, plural, united by a national bond of friendship and collaboration, and a shared story of connection across water.

Sociology: We are intrinsically social

The notion that the UK is becoming “an island of strangers” contradicts what we know about how human societies function. We are fundamentally relational - forming and building connections in our schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods, shops, and clubs on a daily basis. Even if we do not know the names of those who live across the street, we have a great deal in common. They are not strangers, but neighbours. In times of crisis, as shown during the Covid pandemic, neighbourliness is a critical front-line defence. To undermine that by calling our neighbours ‘strangers’ is a recipe for social breakdown. True social cohesion can never come through exclusion only by being deliberately nurtured through acts of welcome, the language of inclusion and recognition of shared purpose and identity.

Language: What we say matters

In his speech, the Prime Minister gave credence to the claim that migrants fail to integrate because they don’t speak English. He said: “when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language.” But English proficiency is not the main barrier to social cohesion. As a country that proudly recognises multiple languages: Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Cornish, British Sign Language, we should understand this. And as a nation who fails miserably at learning other world languages we should appreciate the enormous effort it takes to learn any level of English. The vast majority of migrants put us to shame in how quickly and readily they learn to communicate effectively. Might I suggest that the Prime Minister - whose speech contained questionable language that was factually untrue, politically dangerous and socially offensive - might benefit from an English lesson himself?

Honesty: We benefit from migration

When the Prime Minister claimed he was launching a strategy to “close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country,” he implied that migration is to blame for many of the difficulties the UK is facing. This is not a new tactic — some of the world’s darkest moments have been preceded by politicians stoking fear and resentment against immigrants for political gain. We must resist this rhetoric. Perhaps we could start by asking exactly which migrants are being blamed for this so-called "squalid chapter"? Is it the 200,000 people from Hong Kong who have arrived under the British National Overseas scheme, bringing skills and making major contributions to our economy? Or the 250,000 Ukrainian refugees who have been welcomed with open arms and helped knit communities closer together? Is it the 30,000 Afghans who supported British forces, risking their lives to do so? Or the 750,000 international students contributing £35 billion a year to the UK economy, sustaining our universities and global reputation for outstanding education and research? What about the 265,000 non-British NHS staff who work tirelessly to care for our sick and elderly? Blaming migrants for the UK’s problems is dishonest and dangerously divisive, potentially alienating the very people who are often most invested in making the country stronger, safer, and more successful.

Integrity: We need to fix the real problem

The Prime Minister’s use of the phrase “island of strangers” strikes a chord, not because we are all strangers to one another - we are not - but because many of us increasingly feel isolated in our own communities. There is evidence to support this emotional response. According to the Office for National Statistics, around 27% of adults in the UK report feeling lonely always, often, or some of the time. A report titled A Divided Kingdom, published just a day after the government’s immigration white paper, highlights growing intergenerational divides with only 5.5 per cent of children in the UK living near someone aged 65 or older, and just seven per cent of care home residents regularly interacting with anyone under the age of 30. Young adults are increasingly working remotely, reducing opportunities for casual, everyday social contact. Rising numbers of people live alone, and digital technology — while connecting us in some ways — often replaces the richness of face-to-face relationships.

These shifts are not caused by immigration, and blaming migrants for the disconnections and discontent we feel only distracts us from addressing the real causes of social fragmentation. We need to find ways to reconnect with one another in person, recognising in those around us the image of God, our common humanity and the opportunity for service.

Starmer’s narrative must be challenged before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The great English poet and cleric John Donne famously wrote:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

It would be sad if, in our modern world, we lost sight of that truth and ended up becoming estranged islanders floating on a sea of fear and xenophobia.

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

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