Using AV to drive modern worship: St George’s Church, Tredegar
Church
Published: June 12, 2026
A more modern style needed a modern AV system to match.
St George’s Church in Tredegar is a large, non-traditional church building which more resembles a Baptist Chapel than a C of E church, with a gallery extending all the way around the back and edge of the space. It is used regularly for services and other events, with the hall upstairs allowing several community groups to make use of the space.
After changing direction with the appointment of a new, dynamic vicar, the church needed to upgrade the audio-visual system in the church to reflect the more modern style of worship that the church leadership had as a vision. Being a big space, they were very invested in creating a solution that would give everyone in the congregation an inclusive experience, regardless of whether they were sitting at the front, back or in the gallery.
The church knew that a comprehensive sound and visual system was required to allow them to communicate with the congregation in the way they wanted, and reached out to API to help. We were inspired by their vision and knew that our passion for equipping churches with the tools they need to communicate clearly would suit this project.
The church was on a journey to modernise, and new AV was a key part of this transformation.
The Challenge: Designing a modern system in a listed building
Upon first visiting, the current sound system was working, but not providing anywhere near the quality and intelligibility required for a space of that size. There was no provision for showing videos or presentations, and that was a large part of the motivation to get a visual solution installed in the building.
The church leadership had a clear vision of what they wanted from new equipment, so the key was listening to these requirements and picking products that were well-suited to both these needs and the building. One of the main challenges was the layout of any visual system; there was no option for a single large screen at the front of the church, but also no place to mount smaller screens on either side without blocking doorways or imposing on the central space.
Equally, the new loudspeakers would need to be carefully placed to give even coverage for the entire congregation, but without causing issues with feedback when the microphones were in use. The front speakers had to be mounted in the same position as the existing units, which were worryingly close to the two fixed microphone points at the lectern and the pulpit, so thought was put into how to minimise the probability of feedback once installed.
Our Solution: Using the building to our advantage
The position of the screens was critical to ensure everyone could see clearly, and in the end, thanks to the limited mounting options, we supplied 2 large 65″ commercial screens on trolleys for the front space, with 2 smaller 43″ screens acting as repeaters mounted to the underside of the gallery on each side of the church.
The sound system was built around a full suite of 4 wireless microphones, as this gave the church leadership the flexibility to use microphones when leading the service, with handheld microphones to invite participation from the audience. A digital mixer controlled solely via iPad removed the need for the operator to sit next to the equipment cabinet, instead being free to sit amongst the rest of the congregation and enjoy the service. Column loudspeakers ensured even coverage for the entire congregation, and the addition of a subwoofer gave a broad range to the system when playing music through the CD player or Bluetooth receiver.
Because of the flexibility of routing the visual system, we installed our custom control panel at the rack, which allowed for the various inputs to be selected as required.
A feed from the church inputs and a small camera mounted at the back of the church were being fed through to the hall upstairs, when this space was used as a creche or overflow space.
*The nerdy bit*
For the screens on trolleys at the front of the church, we wanted to make sure their positioning was as flexible as possible, so we used a wireless HDMI transmission system, which meant they could be connected anywhere (as long as they had power). The latency (delay) on these units is so small that you could not tell the difference between these screens and the others, which were hardwired into the system.
The outcome:
An AV system tailored to the church, which aligned with the church’s vision to bring more modern worship to the building, through the use of presentations, videos and other digital content. Our passion for equipping customers with the correct sound and visual equipment to easily communicate their message allowed us to really understand the church’s needs and tick all their boxes.
The client left a 5* review, noting that “everything was well communicated, and the team was incredibly accommodating”.
The client left a 5* review, noting that “everything was well communicated, and the team was incredibly accommodating”.
Read more Case Studies
A circa £30,000 state-of-the-art conference room gives the South Western Ambulance Service a place to train, meet and excel.
AV gives the building a new lease of life with a £50,000 investment.
A vast space with a huge reverberation time required a clever design and a £25,000 investment to ensure the congregation could hear every word for the first time in 20 years!