On the Thursday 28th of January, Emma and me (Tom) went to the 02 arena for the Voice in a Million concert. The concert at the 02 was the first in a series of events worldwide, which over the course of the next year, will enable a goal of recording one million children’s voices in harmony; and more importantly, to help broaden the awareness of the millions of orphaned and abandoned children that need a new mother, father home and family … for life.
Emma and I arrived at Kings Cross Station at 10:30am and had a rehearsal of the concert to get to at 1:30pm. We got the tubes and arrived at the O2 and there were hundreds of school children. We got inside and we were meeting up with other Revelation Rock Gospel Choir groups from Cambridge, University of East Anglia, Royal Holloway London, Keele, Warwick, St Andrews, Bristol and even Aberdeen. After not being able to find them amongst the hundreds of children and no phone signal we bumped into them and got registered. We were then taken as a group into the Arena and places in our seats. There was roughly 5000 children and youths at the event and it was really loud and awesome.
We soon started going through the songs to sing and when all 5000 of us should come in. The children were really well behaved. As well as small group songs and solos the 5000 choir sung in total 13 songs including "Oh Happy Day", " I Wanna Know What Love Is", "What the World Needs Now" and "You Raise Me Up".
After rehearsal we had a quick tea before the whole arena filled with an audience and Show time started at 7:30pm. Amongst the songs were talks by Nicky Cambell, Sinita, Rick Wakeman and Clare Grogen on the purpose of the nights' concert and themselves have links with adoption and fostering. It was a great night and looked great with most of us having a glow stick each to light up the 02. The finale was "You Raise Me Up" and that was the end of the show. Emma and I stayed at friends that night and came back the next day. Go on www.voiceinamillion.co.uk to watch some or all of the show and also a share of the proceeds from the event go to and releases for the project will go to the British Association for Adoption and Fostering
See you at choir on Tuesday.
Tom Dunham (Rock Gospel Secretary)</p>