Bright City’s story is one of a brave family of artists set free to serve God, serve our Church and serve our City.
St Peter’s Church was planted in 2009 in Brighton, a city on England’s south coast bursting with creativity and life. Graphic designers, illustrators and artists, sculptors, dancers and photographers – Brighton is a thriving, artistic melting pot with a world-renowned music scene. Home to everyone from Adele and Fatboy Slim to buskers and university music students, it’s a city that the church wanted to engage with as well as meet the needs of.
Archie and Sam Coates (Vicar of St Peter’s) positioned worship at the centre of church life and established St Peter’s as a chaplaincy to the city’s many artists. Creatives were drawn to the church, including songwriters Matt Redman (10,000 Reasons, Blessed Be Your Name), Martin Smith (Delirious?, Majesty, Waiting Here For You), and a new generation of producers, musicians and song-writers. Led by worship pastor Paul Nelson, the natural progression was an intentional gathering of this group in 2014, birthing 13 songs. The songs became the self-titled debut album Bright City,released in March 2015- a record including songs that are comfortable in a traditional church setting (such as ‘We Believe’ and ‘Forever Yours’) and others with a far wider appeal (such as ‘Colour’- broadcast at the Sydney NYE firework display and is on the playlists of UK-wide store chains and gyms).
Over the following years Bright City has been established as a family of artists (across music, dance, production and visual arts) who serve and lead the worship life of St Peter’s and unite around a vision to see our church, city and world come alive through worshipping Jesus. A new expression for a new generation of worshippers, our values of authenticity, bravery and creativity (our ABC) run through the core of all we do.
The second studio album Hello Maker was released in July 2017, including songs ‘Rock of Our Salvation’and ‘Maker of the Moon’ - an intentionally more church/worship based record. “The project is a collection of honest and brave offerings to the One we were made for,” explains worship pastor Paul Nelson. “Birthed in worship, in our journey as the Bright City family and in the context of the City we do life in, we hope that in some way the songs bring you face to face with your maker, as they have done for us.”
This year Bright City are releasing new music (Still Vol 2 – March 2018), taking part in Brighton’s Fringe Festival (England’s largest Arts Festival), running worship events in Brighton as well leading worship around the country at Spring Harvest, HTB Focus and Rocknations.
