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

Change

Community

Justice

Sustainability

2 May 2025

5 min read

Everything is a movement – and that’s as it should be

They’re powerful when they are marked by love, dignity and justice.

Julia Kendal

Juila is a writer and social justice advocate.

A digital billboard on top of a London building reads: Make Earth Day Everyday.

An Earth Day billboard, London, 2025.

Le Good Society.

I keep accidentally joining movements. In one instance, I had a go at submitting an essay for a competition; when it was (happily) selected to be part of the published book, the blurb told me that I was part of a movement of people embracing messy motherhood stories. At the same time, I am not parenting – and this apparently pulls me into a ‘sisterhood’ of women without children. These could seem contradictory, but I recognise that they are calls to togetherness. And yet, as I go about my life – trying to pay my bills, navigate community, play my part as a citizen of this world that is partly marked by climate crisis and conflict – I have to confess that my gut reaction at being called part of them is to feel tired. I don’t know if I have the energy for another movement in me.

Movements seem to be having a moment. Open the news or social media, and there will be stories of communities of people speaking up together. And yet movements are not new. History reminds us that they have long been one of the best ways to counteract unchecked or disproportionate power. The anti-slavery campaigners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the US civil rights movement, the influence of anti-apartheid and land rights activists… when we participate in a movement for justice, this is the heritage we are locating ourselves in.

What makes a movement? It’s a group of ordinary individuals, and it’s so much more than that. It’s marked by people trying to live the change they seek, but it doesn’t end there. There is something about a movement that is emergent, more than the sum of its parts. Groups of people taking collective action to see change happen. Crucially, the movements that bend the arc of justice are those that are centred on the voices and priorities of those most affected by their cause. In this, they reflect God’s heart; an invitation to us all to participate, with a particular emphasis for those on the margins.

The other week saw Earth Day, an annual event which celebrates the environmental movement. While for some, it can be co-opted to suggest green credentials that don’t bear out the rest of the year, but for many it is an entry point, a chance to meaningfully participate. What began in the US on 22 April 1970 is now marked by around one billion people – one in eight of us – around the world. It’s a particular moment to highlight action for this world that we share. This world with boundaries that are being tested and breached. Just a week earlier, communities in India and Pakistan were experiencing heat that tested the limits of human survival. Our bodies were not made for this kind of weather.

The theme of this year’s Earth Day was ‘Our power, our planet’, with a particular emphasis on scaling up renewable energy. But I have found myself thinking about other kinds of power: the influence of people when they come together. Do we greet moments like this with cynicism, self-interested opportunism, or genuine expectation for change? In the face of horrifying headlines and lived injustice, what motivates people to keep going again for change? There are many likely reasons, often personal. To understand a few of the common ones, we need to go back to the beginning.

“Much of my life goes irrelevantly on, in spite of larger events.”

Nora Ephron

In the opening passages of the Bible, the world was called ‘good',and the rest of the story is one of restoration; what has been broken being made whole and new. This articulates for us what we often intuit: the world was made to be better than this. Where cynicism offers a casual invitation to give up on change, when we look at our daily lives, we see the myriad ways that we demonstrate a quiet hope for tomorrow. Sowing seeds in spring is an act of faith that the summer will bloom.

This conviction might manifest differently for each of us. For some of us, it means carrying a persistent hope in spite of the hurt we see and feel. For others, it might feel grittier. Like the irritation of a grain of sand in your shoe; you can’t walk on until you do something about it. Either way, it is a longing for something that is brighter and fairer and kinder than what we have right now. Something more resonant with the deep cries of our souls.

Underlying these instincts is our God-given purpose. He made humans to draw even more goodness out of that which was baked into this world from the beginning. We were shaped to partner with God to see order brought out of chaos, freedom from captivity, a seed of renewal out of the grave. Allowing this to take root in our hearts can save us from a sense of nihilism, that nothing matters.

Like many women of my generation, I am a fan of Nora Ephron’s writing. She famously wrote about taking part in movements and yet “Much of my life goes irrelevantly on, in spite of larger events.” There is welcome honesty in acknowledging how privilege can insulate against the impacts of injustice. But there is also a provocation in these words. When we respond to God’s invitation to participate in his restoration work, we find our relevancy in the work we were always made for. In other words, our choices can be meaningful.

I may have stumbled into some movements, but I can see that these are invitations to move closer to each other. Acting for justice can require sacrifice of lifestyle, time, comfort. But outworking this together can also bring growth, empathy, joy. When we are weary, there is life to be found with others. God is inherently relational: three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – co-existing as one. In this relationship is unity, service of each other, appreciation of each other’s gifts. With God’s likeness in each of us, we too made for this kind of community. Our movements are powerful when they are marked by such love, dignity and justice. Glimpsing this induces us to look beyond ourselves, to step towards people and circumstances. Being part of a movement is to choose to be in closer proximity with each other and the world we dwell in together.

I remind myself that in such community, there is room to acknowledge weariness. At the same time, there is also an encouragement to move beyond disenchantment about days like Earth Day, about gloomy headlines, about discouragement or setbacks. It can be tempting to let our lives go irrelevantly on, but being part of a movement reminds us that we don’t have to settle for that.

Celebrate with us

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

Join with us