Thank you to all those who rose to our challenge to join in on our Diocesan recording of Hark the Herald Angels Sing for the diocesan website Christmas greetings. Pip has done a wonderful job putting them all together, so check it out if you’ve not seen it yet.

It was so good it made us think… one of the challenges this year was that, because of timing, all our churches were in Advent colours rather than in the full splendour of Christmas. We therefore thought it would be great to get really organised for next year – which just happens to be the 200th anniversary of the carol Silent Night.

Could you, over the festive period, record your congregation/group/choir singing Silent Night and upload it using the form below. This will give us a full year to prepare, and means we can have something really special to share for Christmas 2017. The videos will be edited together to form a composite video – so it’s important that we all use the same version, key, and speed. It doesn’t matter what sort of musicians you use – it can be traditional choir and organ, or whole congregation, or piano and violin, or solo voice – the more variety the better.

The more churches that take part, the better the video will be, so please do consider joining us.

We have learnt a lot from this year’s taster and offer the following Additional Top Tips:

1) Record as many verses as possible as this gives us more freedom in how it is put together.

2) It is helpful if there is not a lot of moving of camera/phone/ipad – some panning around is lovely to see the full church/group etc, but too much makes it difficult to see.

3) It helps if the person operating the camera doesn’t sing … otherwise (especially on phones etc), the only person who can be heard is this one!

All submissions need to be in by the end of January 2017 – so please get singing! (And if you have any problems with uploading, contact Siân.)

Top Tips

1) Once you have taken your video, you need to put it on the device (laptop, computer, etc) that you are going to use to send the video to the diocese. If you have recorded the video on a smartphone, you can do it from there – or you can plug your phone or video recorder into your computer.

2) Complete the form below, checking all the details are correct. Consent forms are particularly important for children and vulnerable adults, but there may be other people in your congregation who do not wish to be seen online and it is important that we respect this. Use the “Additional Comments” section to tell us about any concerns you have and we will contact you to suggest a work around.

3) Where it says “media files” click the “browse” button. This will let you search for your video on your device. One you have found the video you wish to upload, click on it and press “open”.

4) When you click on “submit” the file will start uploading.