projects

Our projects are really varied; from installing speakers into old church buildings to running production at large-scale festivals, from 20-1000 capacity corporate conferences to multi-venue cross-city Christian Conferences, here are some start-to-finish examples of our work.


ADCON 2025 - Need we say much more?

1 year of planning - 1 day load in - 1,000 delegates - 1 very happy client.


More Together Festival 2025

Trinity Park Conference Centre and Showground

CSL took a team of technicians, and riggers to Ipswich with 2 artics worth of kit. With 7 days on site but only 3 of those to build we had our work cut out, but as ever with good planning everything fell into place. Here are just a few of the photos from our week in the fields of Suffolk.


A regular, intimate corporate conference, the same set up in a few different rooms…

AdClients are a long standing client of City Sound and Lighting. Over the last 9 years we have looked after some of their larger conferences, but in the last 12 months we have also taken on their ‘Expansion’ & ‘Masterminds’ Conferences.

Generally these consist of 20 or 30 delegates in the room, and a zoom call with slides and camera for those who can not attend in person. 

These intimate conferences still need high levels of production to assist and enable all of the speakers to deliver their content clearly, no matter the audience size. We provide full production; everything from the backdrop and uplighters to the large format displays, PA system and staging.

The challenge with these events is the short load in and load out, most of these events are put on in conference rooms rather than event spaces, which also adds to some of the quirks and challenges we’ve overcome along the way. These events in general are either held in London or in Canterbury, the home of AdClients.


WeAreGetWed

May 2025 the CSL team loading in our largest mirror ball yet, into a beautiful marquee, in a quaint Kentish village, and here are the results! A great party atmosphere to dance the night away with our lighting, haze and mirrorball.

“Steve and his team created exactly the right party atmosphere with the lighting that we needed for our event. The whole process from suggesting what would work through to set-up and de rig was super easy and we'll absolutely be using City Sound and Light again in the future as well as recommending them to other event planners!”

Helen Roberts-Hills - Wedding and Events Manager www.wearegetwed.com


Installation of aesthetically pleasing and effective speakers into a listed building…

In 2020 we were invited to be part of a lockdown project to capture what *would* have been in-person classical music concerts for the annual prestigious Stour Music Festival, based between Ashford and Canterbury in Kent. https://www.stourmusic.org.uk/

This festival historically has its home at All Saint’s Church in Boughton Aluph. We were first involved as we were asked to provide multi-track recordings which accompanied a multi-camera capture of the live classical performances so that more people were able to enjoy the Festival when a live audience wasn’t permitted in the same way that it is again now (those social distancing rules feel a long way away now!)

Off the back of the first weekend of concerts, we continued to work alongside the Stour Music Festival to amplify some of their contemporary events, and then also moved on to supplying a speech system for the conductor or MD to address the audience between movements.

After careful consideration between the music festival and the active church community, they decided to collaborate and invest heavily in a permanent 13 box speech PA system which would evenly deliver sound across the whole of the old church building, creating a high-end and unique space which would not usually be achieved in this type of building.

This project involved us managing this collaboration which consisted of two parties with different sets of needs. We were able to listen carefully, managing to work out a total list of needs to be fulfilled, then starting the process of proposing and delivering to the needs and requirements of the Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC)

https://www.canterburydiocese.org/parishsupport/church-buildings/the-diocesan-advisory-committee.php

We digitally replicated all of the speaker locations, placing cable diagrams and routes on to an approved plan before any physical work commenced, ensuring that when we began we were satisfied that all parties were going to be happy with the outcome.

In addition to the 13 discrete, colour matched speakers, we also installed a rack mounted digital sound desk, 4 channels of radio mic for both the church services and the festival to use, and a copper induction loop which runs the whole way around the church building. Next to the organ we placed all of the racked equipment into an acoustically treated IT cabinet, which is locked and bolted to the floor as the church is left open to visitors throughout the year. This rack has to be both simple to use but also available for more complicated uses later down the line, as a result we also made a simple instruction guide for the end user.

To this day we continue to support the church and Stour Music Festival individually, maintaining kit where necessary, and supplementing with additional equipment of engineers, as well as providing full production for some of their outdoor, or marquee concerts.


“Steve helped us think through how to get the best result from an online worship band for our Sunday morning service. He then collated all the audio files from band members, mixed the sound and made the video of us playing split screen. He was so good at communication and made it a pleasure. Everyone has commented on how good the sound and visuals were and other Churches should definitely get this chap involved in making an online band happen!”

Olly Knight | Worship Team Coordinator at The City Church Canterbury

the city church in canterbury

The City Church approached me after seeing some other churches change up the way they present their online worship on YouTube and Facebook. That’s where the online virtual band was born, a way to bring together different members of a band from their own home during lockdown.

We worked together on a recording schedule, and spent 3 days sending audio and video files back and forth.

The leaders and production team at City were impressed with the quality and the feel of having a full band on screen in their own home. One of them even cried a little from the feeling of community it brought.

We believe that the music recorded across many house holds should still be authentic, so there’s no automation, and no auto-tune used at all! But still achieving a professional sound.

The church loved the results and we’re set to produce a different virtual band every other week for the foreseeable future.


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Prayer for Oxford

Matthew Watt, a headteacher in Oxford approached us to edit, mix and produce a 3 minute spoken prayer to air on BBC Radio Oxford this Sunday.

As with most projects of this nature it was a quick turn around!

We were sent over the audio files of 13 different people reading out the whole piece of text, this was then divided up into a couple of sentences each and set to some backing music.

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Matthew was impressed with the speed and quality of our work, and it was a pleasure working with him too!


emily watts | live @ the gulbenkian

We worked long side Emily, on her EP launch at Gulbenkian Theatre, in Canterbury.

We looked after the live sound and a multi-track recording of her whole EP which was then mixed and mastered, and is now online with an amazing live video captured by Andrew Francis.


thank you | by, Avi simmons

Since the COVID lockdown many people have supported the NHS, Avi Simmons has written and recorded a song of encouragement for the NHS and carers, which I’ve had the pleasure of mixing and mastering for them.

Caleb Simmons recorded the raw audio, and the video. Steve went through the new ‘no contact mixing process’, over the phone, with plenty of sharing of files over DropBox, it only took a couple of hours, and the sixth mix was the one we went for. Then mix 6 went though our mastering process and we sent that on to Caleb and Sarah.

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It’s been great to have the opportunity to work on something that so close to many of our hearts through this time!