Let’s hope live music and theatre can resume soon in Chesterfield

Looking back in history, holiday pay is a quite recent thing, as are holidays abroad, but these do seem to be a major priority for Government and the media as lockdown eases.

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During the main part of lockdown, people had access to an imaginary world through a huge variety of streamed TV, yet there are still some of us who find that the pictures are better on the radio, or reading a good book!

The puzzle recently has been the rush to get pubs and cinemas back into action (and why not?) while still keeping up the ban on live music and theatre performances.

I know that pubs and cinemas tend to contribute more to national economic wealth, but there is so much in our national life that depends on the expressiveness, the imagination, and the creativity of music and theatre.

Chesterfield recognised that when the first civic theatre in the country (now the Pomegranate) was set up in 1949.

It and the Winding Wheel are still closed.

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Chesterfield also pulls more than its weight in amateur music and drama, with choirs of varying sizes including the Philharmonic and the co-operative choirs, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, amateur dramatics, musical theatre and dance, the town’s own orchestra, and much more.

For centuries the crowning glory to all this has been the fact that the parish church has had a choir to rival the great cathedral choirs of the land.

While Chesterfield is proud of the Crooked Spire, it should be even more proud that (alongside all the other musical opportunities) boys and girls still have the chance to learn and love the great musical traditions that are special to this nation, and to do so in the context of the worship for which the music was written.

Chesterfield is one of the few places that genuinely include girls and boys from all backgrounds, and the musical education offered is entirely safe and entirely free of charge.

All we ask is the voice (obviously) and the commitment – and let’s face it, nothing worthwhile is achieved in life without commitment.

Let’s hope that all of these elements of the imaginative and creative life of our community can resume soon.

We would certainly be worse off without our pubs, restaurants and cinemas – and we are definitely worse off if the opportunities to use our basic human creative talent are denied us for longer than is really necessary.

Keep safe and keep well.

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