Meet the Street at Christmas

Mark De-Lisser visits rural Wales to create a choir made up of people from isolated rural areas. Christmas is a time when we come together and when music fills the air, but the isolation of the Welsh countryside can make it difficult to create strong social connections. Mark meets Dossie, a local villager who now lives alone after her husband passed away, and Ella, who has recently moved back with her parents after university and is struggling to make new friends. Can Mark pull a group together not only to put on a performance of their lifetimes, but to help them make lasting connections with a real impact?

In this episode Mark De-Lisser is in the Welsh Valleys, where the decline of the mining industry has had a real impact on communities, leaving some people feeling less connected. He starts out in Aberdare market, hoping to recruit members for his next choir and show people how singing in groups can make their lives better. He meets Carol, who grew up in the Bahamas and settled in Aberdare 13 years ago with her Welsh husband. Unlike her home town, where there was a strong community feeling, she mainly works from home and finds it lonely. Stay-at-home mum Carys also joins the team, as does ex-solider Carl, who left the army to care for his disabled daughter, and Jules who has mobility problems and suffers from anxiety. Mark thinks that coming together to support each other could be just what this group needs, with lots of laughter along the way.

Mark De-Lisser puts together a choir of strangers from the suburbs of Cardiff. At a local park he finds his first choir member, Gareth, who has a local cake-making business. Mark also meets 29-year-old Leticia, who has moved from Argentina to follow her dreams to make a life in the UK, and then visits a branch of the UK Men’s Shed Charity to see if he can recruit any older men. Mark also meets local resident, Sharon, who lives with a disability which greatly impacts her life.

Mark De-Lisser recruits a choir from the high street and office blocks of Cardiff. There he finds a young man called Jake who has come from a more rural part of Wales with a close-knit community, and who finds making friends in the city much harder. Mark then recruits another willing participant for his choir, Leusa, who is new to the city and struggles to join established groups, and Carol, who recently lost her husband of 50 years. Carol turns out to be a fantastic singer with choir experience under her belt, but hasn’t wanted to really engage with people in a choir since the death of her husband. Could this be her chance to connect?

For this final episode, Mark raise the stakes by bringing all four of his choirs together to put on a festive grand finale in front of a large audience. Three members are given solos in the final performance, including Jules, whose fears about trying something new make it an even bigger challenge for her. The grand finale performance culminates with a surprise reveal of some more musical friends for the groups to meet and carry on singing with.