A community worker who set up a choir with a lottery grant six months ago is singing the praises of group performing as members prepare for their debut show.

Anita Bolland said she was inspired by Gareth Malone many years ago when he did a community choir in South Oxhey.

“I knew what a fantastic way this would be of bringing people together,” she said.

Gareth went on to present Bafta award-winning TV series The Choir and form the Military Wives choir.

Last year, the Ravenscliffe Community Development Project at the Gateway Community Centre, where Miss Bolland is a community development worker, received a £9,940 Awards For All grant to start a choir.

The 32-strong group has been rehearsing for six months and tomorrow will have its first public performance at Thorpe Edge Community Festival, at the Rockwell Centre, to about 1,000 people.

Miss Bolland said: “At the moment they’re excited. Maybe nerves will kick in at the weekend, but it will be good if we can hold on to the excitement.”

Miss Bolland, 56, is passionate about the choir, called Let’s Sing, which she says has numerous benefits.

“I’ve been singing for more than 20 years with a barbershop quartet – I know how good singing is. I fully appreciate the well-being factor that singing brings,” she said.

“We have one lady with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, who went for a lung function test at the doctors and it had improved. He said, ‘What are you doing differently?’ And she said, ‘Nothing, just singing.’”

Researchers at Gothenburg University in Sweden this week announced that singers’ heartbeats can synchronise when they perform together and now hope to look at the impact on health.

“The choir is about bringing people together to reduce social isolation and about improving emotional, physical and spiritual well-being.”

The songs the choir will perform are Somewhere over the Rainbow, What a Wonderful World, You Raise Me Up and Thank You for the Music.

The choir rehearses each Wednesday from 2pm to 4.30pm at the Eccleshill Mechanics Institute in Stone Hall Road.

Anyone who wants to join can just turn up at any session.

Let’s Sing will also perform at Eccleshill Village Fair on Saturday, July 20.