Brussels guest of honour at Bristol’s Hand in Hand Festival
The Hand in Hand Festival, which brings together LGBTQI+ choirs from the British Isles, took place in Bristol from 16 to 18 August 2024. Brussels was the guest of honour at the event.
21 August 2024
The Hand in Hand Festival was exceptionally open to a continental choir this year. Organised every two years, the event brought together some forty choirs and around 1,400 singers from all over the British Isles.
As the organising choir for the next Various Voices Festival, Sing Out Brussels! was invited to take part. Around thirty members of Sing Out Brussels! sang at the grand gala on Saturday evening, and gave a closing concert on Sunday lunchtime, before handing over to Blackpool, which will host the next Hand in Hand festival in 2027.
The choir members who took part in the festival discovered our now famous stickers in their Welcome pack, enabling them to subscribe to our newsletter. A number of speeches were also made to put Brussels in the spotlight during the festival and to confirm the opening of registrations for choirs in September.
The Various Voices Brussels 2026 organising team, accompanied by Simon Paco, Artistic Director, took a lot of notes during the weekend. They drew inspiration from it for the festival in preparation. We were also able to see for ourselves the huge expectations generated by Various Voices 2026. Hand in Hand gave us a chance to rediscover the atmosphere of a festival of LGBTQI+ choirs: street concerts, dance evenings, workshops, guided tours, laughter and tears, moments of queer pride… On a smaller scale, since the next Various Voices should bring together three times as many choirs and at least twice as many delegates.
