The Woodlands Church

The Woodlands church is the flagship home of a hardworking Bristol Christian community whose dynamic forward-looking church has a busy calendar of events and performance based worship. Enlightened were delighted to be approached by this active and engaged ministry to revitalise their performance lighting and audio-visual capability..

The Woodlands Church is a pretty, late Victorian church built from local red sandstone with a large central nave and wide columned bayed aisles. The nave originally would have had a double height clerestoried central roof the height of which has however been reduced by construction of a second floor between the columned arched aisles. The new floor was installed by the BBC during their ownership of the church, which they primarily used for storing scenery.

The floors installation however affords the Woodland Church a more versatile space for a modern congregation with added facilities upstairs and a central church space the lower ceiling of which draws focus toward the chancel’s staged alter and performance space. It has the added benefit of easily supporting a professional lighting rig installed by Enlightened at an earlier date. The gothic arched stained glass aisle windows and substantial carved stone columns retain the church’s timeless grandeur.

The Church were looking to upgrade the performance quality and versatility of their existing lighting equipment and we recommended installing six ETC ColorSource LED Pars to update their backline stage lighting as we have extensive experience of the technology’s quality, versatility and reliability which far exceed other units in their price bracket. 

It was important to the Church and ourselves that we were able to provide equipment that met their tight budget yet provided industry performance quality and reliability. 

We complimented this by installing two Zero 88 Chilli Bypass Cabinets totalling 36 channels to control and simply their older struggling system. The cabinets represent great value for money and were chosen to ensure the church complete reliability and control over their new and existing light sources whilst also effortlessly accommodating any additional future requirements affording the church both versatility and longevity of use. 

We also updated their lighting control system by installing an ETC ColorSource 20 lighting deck that has a simple to use touchscreen with uncomplicated drag and drop fixture selection and programmable lighting states. 

The church also wanted their audio-visual capability upgraded, requiring bracket mounted controllable cameras that would allow them to effortlessly stream or record a service or performance in high definition. We installed two Sony SRG-300SE PTZ Cameras integrated via upgraded Cat5E coaxial data cable which we installed to ensure future compatibility and simple expansion. A Sony RM-IP10 remote stick control was included to deliver easy, remote operational control.

To ensure maximum flexibility and control over the church’s lighting for daily use or when not controlled via the lighting desk we installed a simple lighting state programmable wall control panel at the back of the church that also supports a dedicated phone application.