Organising The People’s Show Choir: Poland Tour 2024
The insider guide to organising Show Choir trip abroad to Poland
Taking The People’s Show Choir on the road to Krakow may have seemed slick but involved a lot of work behind the scenes. Here’s a look at staff preparation for the Show Choir Poland trip that started nearly a year before the adventure.
Although choir members journeyed to Poland for five days in May 2024, it was in Summer 2023 that talks were happening about the possibility of the Show Choir going on its first ever tour abroad. That was when Show Choir tour leader Chris Weber broached with The People’s Orchestra CEO Sarah Marshall on the possibility of offering members a chance to do “something really special and share their music and joy abroad”. It led to them hatching a plan to pilot the first ever tour to Krakow – as Chris’ Polish heritage meant he knew the city well and could speak the language fluently. With 21 years of conducting community choirs under his belt, Chris was no stranger to organising choir tours abroad to Italy, Holland and Belgium in the past. So, Chris knew a priority was giving members enough notice to plan their finances for the trip.
Entertaining audiences of all ages and sizes!
In August 2023, the trip was announced and led to 108 people taking part in the Poland People’s Show Choir tour. Chris Weber said: “I was blown away with how many people wanted to come given the financial situation, in this day and age. The tour may have gone very smoothly but behind the scenes was a lot of stress. “It helped that we found a really good partner tour company in Krakow. They organised the hotels and restaurants and were always at hand to
help. Then all we had to do was get everyone there with flights and in the right place at the right time for the performances.”
To keep prices down for some, options of sharing a room were offered that were £400 per person for accommodation, meals and sightseeing trips to a salt mine and Auschwitz. Flights were extra and cost less than £200 return. Some groups of friends chose to fly out days earlier to make a longer holiday of it too.
