Our Dementia Choir and Inspire's Daniela Smith

Inspire are so proud that our very own Nottinghamshire Music Hub Vocal Lead, Daniela Smith, is the Assistant Musical Director of Our Dementia Choir!

Our Dementia Choir began as a documentary for BBC where Nottingham-born actress and presenter Vicky McClure went on a personal journey to discover the extent of music’s power in combatting dementia, after helping care for her grandma who passed away in 2015. Vicky saw the amazing effect the music had in calming her grandma down and bringing back the grandma she knew. Vicky formed a choir of people all living with dementia in Nottinghamshire and took part in a ground-breaking scientific study to see whether music can make measurable difference to their lives. As a result, Our Dementia Choir was born! The choir has had such a positive effect that under the leadership of Mark De-Lisser and assistant leadership of Daniela, the choir continue to meet and perform today.

Daniela and Inspire Music have had the pleasure of working with Mark De-Lisser for a number of years. Although some may know him for his work as a vocal coach on many BBC TV programmes such as The Voice, Eurovision Song Contest and the Masked Singer to name a few, Mark is perhaps best known at Inspire for his work with choirs and delivering music workshops. Mark lives in London and is unable to travel to Nottingham for Our Dementia Choir rehearsals as frequently as he would like to, so contacted Daniela to see if she would be interested in becoming the Assistant Choir Director. Which of course, Daniela said yes!

Daniela and Our Dementia Choir have been on a busy journey recently. From performing at Nottingham Splendour Festival with Tom Grennan, to singing for the Sheffield Health Trust, to appearing on Loose Women and BBC News, to being featured on Gogglebox UK and Australia, and even having a question written about them on Tipping Point! Perhaps most excitingly of all, the Choir has recently visited Abbey Road Studios in London to record their first single ‘What’s Your Story’ which was written by a local Nottingham artist, Karen Smalley and her band The Idolins. All proceeds of the single go to the Our Dementia Choir charity. Download and stream the single.

Inspire are delighted that a video from Our Dementia Choir will be shown at our annual An Inspired Christmas Concert on 6 December at the Royal Concert Hall and online. Find out more and book your tickets.

For more information about Our Dementia Choir, visit their websiteand don’t forget to catch up with the second season of the documentary on BBC iPlayer.

Inspire could not be prouder of Daniela and the work she is doing for this fantastic cause.