The Power of Percentages: Mapping Your Choir’s Priorities

Written By Will Prideaux

Here’s a brilliant exercise to try with your choir committee or leadership team: assign percentages to the different purposes of your choir.

Think in terms of categories:

  • musical excellence

  • social enjoyment

  • recruitment

  • adventurous programming

  • charitable work

  • community representation, and so on...

Each person creates a pie chart totalling 100%. Then compare results.

The insights can be illuminating.

People often bring different perspectives and priorities to a choir. Where one person - say your choir director - may place greater emphasis on musical development, others may value community visibility or social connection more highly. It’s not about proving anyone right or wrong — it’s about understanding what matters most to your group as a whole.

Once you map your priorities in this way, you’ll start to understand why certain decisions generate debate, why different parts of the organisation focus their energy in different directions.

These conversations can help align expectations and open the door to stronger and healthier collaboration.

This exercise can also help identify under-resourced areas. Perhaps repertoire development only takes up 5% of your effort, yet it’s where you want to grow. That tells you something.

This is about becoming intentional. Purposeful. Honest.

And from there — you build.

Will Prideaux

Will Prideaux is a choral conductor, educator, and director of Peterborough Sings!, the award-winning choral organisation behind Peterborough Male Voice Choir, Peterborough Voices, and Peterborough Youth Choir. A graduate of Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, William is known for his work revitalising the male choir sector through inclusive leadership, bold repertoire, and project-based recruitment. He has worked with leading ensembles including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra, and has been recognised as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Schools of Music. A passionate advocate for musical excellence and community engagement, William is shaping the future of choral singing—one rehearsal at a time.

https://www.peterboroughsings.org.uk/willprideaux-biography
Next

Why Competitions Change Choirs (for Better and Worse)