If you fancy a bit of singing without the pressure of an audition, there is a free afternoon coming up that is hard to argue with. The Big Saturday Sing lands outside Theatre Royal Winchester on Saturday 22 August, and it is a proper drop-in affair: no booking, no tickets, and no singing voice required. You can turn up anytime between 11:30am and 5pm, so there is no need to plan your whole day around it.
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The whole thing is set up to be easygoing. Tables and chairs are laid out along the street, the theatre bar stays open for refreshments, and the singing is aimed at everyone, from small children to grown-ups. It is less a formal concert and more a community sing-along, with the newly brightened outdoor area of the theatre making it a welcoming spot to settle in for a while.
What makes it work is the range of choirs involved, and there is something here for most tastes. The Blue Apple Singers come from Hampshire's Blue Apple Theatre, an award-winning arts organisation that champions neurodisabled performers. Sing For Fun keeps things accessible with pop, rock and musical theatre from the 1950s to the present day, while SingIt Otterbourne has been singing for enjoyment and raising money for charity since 2016. Sing Now Choir has been bringing people together through singing for over a decade and now reaches hundreds of members across Hampshire. The Winchester Community Choir grew out of a series of workshops back in 2005 when people simply wanted a choir in Winchester that anyone could join without an audition, and it still meets weekly during term time at The United Church on Jewry Street.
And for the Southampton crowd, SO Sound is the one to know. It is a vibrant, modern choir that takes on pop, rock, indie, soul, musical theatre and Motown, and it was set up in March 2024 by Gavin Munn and T. Gavin is a professional musician with thirty years of experience across TV, film, theatre and live performance, and the choir runs weekly sessions on Tuesday evenings in Woolston and Thursday evenings in Totton, so it is an easy one to keep going with after the day is done.
It is also worth a look at the building itself. Theatre Royal Winchester is an intimate Edwardian-style theatre in the city centre and the only surviving cine-variety theatre in the country. It opened as a cinema-variety house in 1914, went dark for four years before reopening in November 1978, and was restored in the late nineties with a multi-million-pound renovation that brought back the original plaster and the proscenium arch. The 400-seat auditorium reopened in 2001, and the venue is run by the arts and education charity Play to the Crowd, which also puts on Hat Fair and Playmakers Youth Theatre. It is only a short walk from Winchester station, so it is an easy trip from Southampton for the day.
So, if you are after a low-key Saturday with a bit of music and no cost attached, this is a good shout. Just turn up, grab a chair, and join in whenever you feel like it.
Published Date
4 August 2026
