Singers Inspired, under the musical directorship of Carol O'Neill, began life as a community choir in October 2004, having evolved from its previous incarnation, Voices Allowed, which began a year earlier and had been the brain child of the Lodge Farm Project.

Lodge Farm hoped to establish a community choir in the Downham Market area as well as facilitating several other musically based projects in schools and the wider community.

When Lodge Farm withdrew their support in October 2004 members of Voices Allowed really wanted their fledgling choir to continue. We all felt the choir was worthwhile and wonderful, and everyone wanted to carry on meeting and singing together - and so out of the ashes of one choir another grew.

Those of the choir who remember those first few weeks, will recollect that despite our determination, it seemed nigh on impossible that we'd be able to carry on. We very quickly needed to track down funding, form a committee and draw up a constitution, whilst at the same time ensuring that the members continued meeting and singing together.

At one point things were so tight that one of the then choir members had to under write the expenditure to ensure that we could continue. While the grant applications were processed choir members showed their ingenuity by raising money with curry nights, cakes stalls and classes.

The minutes of those early meetings show a great flurry of activity as the ad hoc committee got to work on the very real issues of funding to meet the cost of Carol's fees, hall rental and insurance, along with drawing up a constitution which reflected the kind of inclusive and welcoming group we still feel ourselves to be.

On 11th November the choir voted to decide on a new name. We quickly whittled the choices down to a short list of 2. Singers Inspired, which came from the lyrics of a song that Carol had written for the choir and Amabile which is Latin for lovingly. Singers Inspired won by two votes.