The Church of England Rector of St Paul’s, West Hackney, the Revd Niall Weir, writes about the Cantignorus Chorus, a 60-strong choir made up of people from groups that use the church hall, from the homeless to Narcotics Anonymous. The choir, directed by Tom Daggett, OBE Outreach Fellow at St Paul’s Cathedral, has recorded its third single, Let’s Bring Them Here for Christmas, about the plight of the Calais unaccompanied child refugees (watch the video at the foot of this article).

A whole range of groups use our hall, it’s in use full time. We have a weekly lunch and evening meal run by North London Action for the Homeless for around 90 people, a project working with vulnerable young women, and three different Narcotics Anonymous groups, to name just a few of the organisations we host. We work with people who are on the margins of society.

When we first set up the choir, these groups were like oil and water and music was a way of bringing them together. In the choir, people are divided only by what voice they sing, whether soprano, alto, tenor or bass. The choir also includes singers from the congregation and the local community.

One of the lovely aspects of this has been that the people who would never normally meet are in contact with each other. A local mum with two children will stop and say hello to a drug addict in the street because they know each other from the choir where they once would have passed by without acknowledgement.

A lot of people dream of singing and the choir has given them a chance of realising that dream without having to read music. One man sent the first CD we made to his family that he’d not been in contact with for years and it became a means of getting back in touch at Christmas.

This year, people said that refugees and the plight of unaccompanied child refugees at Calais was uppermost in their minds. The message of our new single, Let’s Bring Them Here for Christmas, is that wherever you are from, you are a member of the human family and you are loved and we would like to extend our hospitality to you however we can.