How we turned local history into a song forty students made together
Students from Ryburn Valley High School and The Brooksbank School wrote, recorded and released an original single inspired by Anne Lister, and performed it at the Piece Hall on what would have been her 234th birthday.
Anne Lister was a Halifax landowner, businesswoman, traveller and mountaineer who died in 1840, and who wrote more than five million words of diaries. Some of them are in a code she invented, recording her relationships with women. Those diaries are now on the UNESCO register, and the BBC series Gentleman Jack introduced her to an audience well beyond Yorkshire. She lived openly on her own terms at a time when very little about that was possible.
She also lived about four miles from both of our Calderdale secondary schools.
Terry Logan, a dynamic learning mentor at Ryburn Sixth with a role across our Trust developing enrichment, and a singer and musician herself, brought together forty students aged eleven to seventeen from both schools to write a song about what Anne Lister's life might mean to them.
Hannah speaks to the crowd at the single’s premier in the Piece Hall
Students join a regency-era dance with costumed dancers and the Anne Lister Programme Coordinator.
How it worked
Calderdale's Culturedale Year of Culture programme, a year of cultural events across the borough, commissioned and funded the project. Rachel Lappin, the Anne Lister Programme Co-ordinator, supported it throughout.
Students came from across the two schools: choirs, bands, LGBTQ+ committees, a girls' self-empowerment group, poetry clubs and the schools' own poet laureates. Most identified as girls or non-binary. One boy took part, who happens to be the great nephew of Gentleman Jack's writer Sally Wainwright. It was a deliberately wide net, and it drew in a lot of young people who would not usually find themselves on a stage or in a recording studio.
The first sessions in each school were about Anne Lister herself: who she was, why she matters, and what the students wanted the song to say. They landed on courage, self-empowerment, being yourself, and the idea that knowing your history changes how you see your own present. Then they chose how they wanted to work, as writers, singers or instrumentalists, and Terry built the following sessions around what they had picked.
The instrumentalists jammed together over several weeks until a melody and a musical shape emerged, with Terry guiding them on bringing different ideas together and on how a sound carries a feeling. Once the instrumental was there, the writers went to work: brainstorming, arguing, and then deciding together how to fold forty people's ideas into one story rather than a list of contributions. Everything about the process was theirs to shape, in a space where nobody was going to be laughed at for an idea.
They recorded the song and shot the video on 26 March. It was mixed at The Bridge Studios in Hebden Bridge, with artwork by Adam Pryce, and released on Together Trust Music.
The Piece Hall
On 3 April, Anne Lister's birthday, the students were honoured guests at the flower laying ceremony in the Piece Hall courtyard. Lister's Legacy was premiered to the crowd and livestreamed, alongside tributes from around the world.
Anne Lister has a devoted international following, and some of the people in that courtyard had travelled a long way to be there.
“What an honour to hear this beautiful song at the Piece Hall this morning. I was full on crying by the end. Thank you for sharing your powerful message and making the world a better place.”
”I saw you perform at the Piece Hall. The song is wonderful and your performance was fantastic. The crowd really enjoyed it. The introductory speech was inspirational.”
Ryburn Sixth student Hannah, one of the lead singers, put it more simply: "Loved being a part of this. So proud of everyone involved."
Why we do things like this
Proceeds from the single went to the Malala Fund, which supports girls' education worldwide.
What the students got was a term of real creative work, taken all the way through: research, composition, writing, rehearsal, a professional studio, a mixed and mastered track, artwork, a release, an audience. Not a workshop that ends when the visiting artist leaves, but a finished piece of work that exists in the world and that they made the decisions on at every stage.
“This project is about more than just making music. It’s about empowering young people to collaborate, tell their stories, understand their history, and create meaningful change. Anne Lister’s legacy has inspired them to express their own voices with confidence, and I am blown away by what they have achieved.”
