Candle Service for The Alder Centre

The Alder Centre is a unique, national centre of excellence providing bereavement and grief counselling with ‘care and education for anyone affected by the death of a child’.

Each year they hold a candle service at Liverpool AnglicanCathedral where they light candles and display the names of any children being remembered. The event’s attended by bereaved families and includes choir performances and readings – all within the main space at the cathedral.  

COVID-19 restrictions meant no audience could be present this year, so the event was moved into the Lady Chapel and live-streamed viaAlder Hey’s YouTube channel.

Adlib looked after all of the technical aspects of the livestream. This included supplying a  three-camera system (two operated cameras, and one on the balcony as a wide shot) mixed on aBlack Magic ATEM TV Studio and streamed via a Black Magic ATEM Mini Pro, which also enabled recording of the mixed output.

To maintain physical distancing and the flow of the event, a number of readings were pre-recorded to enable the lectern to be cleaned between readings and to ensure sufficient space for social distancing. These recordings, and graphics provided by The Alder Centre, were interspersed between the live elements including performances from Marietta Daly & Dominique Daly, Formby High School Choir, and the lighting of the candles.  

The usual format is to have up to 1000 people present in the cathedral with a projection screen for the list of names of children being remembered. This year the list of names was overlayed on top of live shots of the candles being lit to make the live stream as close as possible to attending physically.

In addition to video, Adlib supplied the sound system including choir mics, a playback system, monitoring for the choir, and a small speaker system for volunteers on site to hear what was being played out on the live stream. This was supported by a pair of large screens that showed the live broadcast.

Following the event Frank Reppion, Volunteer Co-ordinator at the Alder Centre thanked Adlib, commenting: 

“On behalf of all the volunteers, staff and myself please accept our sincere thanks for all your help and guidance with the Alder Centre Candle Service. Much appreciated as ever. The hard work, efforts and team work of everyone made this such a joy this year; and it was good to see everything come together. Each reading, song, piece of music, video, and John linking and explaining everything was memorable and watchable in its own right. We have received lots of messages from people to say thank you, and how much the Service has meant to them. There have been over 2600 viewings on YouTube.”

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