Our APCM was held on Sunday 28 April, with many reports presented to the meeting. Here is the Music and DigiComms report for 2023:
With the successful installation of broadband and wifi into church, our twice weekly livestreamed services at St Margaret’s have been far more reliable than in previous years. To further bolster and future-proof the parish online presence, the Digicomms Team appointed a company to provide our digital upgrade; we are still going through the process of applying for a faculty, which is taking some considerable time. They also continued to oversee and develop our parish social media, website and “A Church Near You” page.
In January we welcomed the HeartEdge Manchester choral scholars back to St Margaret’s for a concert of sublime music on the theme of Candlemas. Once again, HeartEdge generously gave all donations received for this concert to St Margaret’s.
Items were posted to our blog and social media streams every day during Lent, including twice-weekly Stations of the Cross as well as seasonally appropriate hymns, anthems and readings.
I continued visiting St Margaret’s CE primary school twice weekly to run a lunchtime choir for KS2 children and lead the whole school weekly singing assemblies. We welcomed the whole school to church for an Easter service, a “Moving On” service at the end of the school year, a Harvest service in the Autumn, and a carol service just before Christmas. Also at that time I took the school choir to the Trafford Centre for a day of singing carols and Christmas songs. Just over £200 was raised for school funds.
Throughout Advent we had our fourth daily online digital Advent calendar, which this year featured candles as well as Christmas and Advent carols, hymns, anthems and readings. This was followed by daily posts for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Huge thanks again to all contributors, who sang songs, read stories and poems. Our carol service and Midnight Christmas service were both livestreamed, and well received.
We continue to post to our blog, Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter feeds daily, and these include “Our Daily Bread” prayers, reflections from the Society of St John the Evangelist, and short daily bible readings. We continue to use our public Facebook page for livestreaming services, and the private St Margaret’s Community Facebook group in which we can offer each other spiritual support.
In 2023 we posted 195 articles to our blog, to which 286 people subscribe. Since establishing our website in 2016, over 71000 people visited our website over 143000 times. In addition, we have 516 Facebook page followers, 110 Facebook group members, 182 Twitter followers and 184 Instagram followers. Our blog consistently receives at least 1700 visitors per month, with highs of 2690 in March 2023 (Lent), 2308 in April (Easter), 3695 in October (Harvest) and 2899 in December 2023 (Advent and Christmas). All our blog posts are automatically ‘pinged’ out to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, from where they can also be accessed. Spotify changed its terms and conditions and made it impossible to upload sermons and magazine articles as podcasts, so we stopped broadcasting on that platform. However, our archive is still available online.
Finally, my sincere thanks to the ministry team and the PCC for their support, for the enthusiasm and commitment of Maggie’s Music Makers, and most importantly to Tom our organist and ‘other’ Tom, our relief pianist.
Dr Carol Porter
Authorised Lay Minister (Digital Church) and Director of Music
St Margaret's Church Prestwich 