Where we work · Goa
Goa, a feast calendar and a great many old buildings
Parish and chapel feasts through the year, Mass in Konkani and English, and congregations scattered across the Gulf, Britain and Portugal watching from a long way off.
The short version
Heritage buildings are a technical problem
Goa's churches are some of the oldest in the country and that is a working constraint rather than a pleasant detail. Laterite and lime plaster, very high ceilings, hard floors and no soft material anywhere — acoustically among the most difficult rooms we work in. They also frequently carry heritage restrictions on what may be fixed to a wall, which rules out a great deal of conventional cabling and mounting before anyone has drawn a plan.
The practical consequence is that Goan installations lean towards discreet, minimally invasive solutions — freestanding or clamp-mounted positions, wireless where it can be made reliable, and audio taken from whatever the building already has rather than a new system bolted to a protected wall. It takes longer to design and it is worth doing properly, because the alternative is a beautiful church with cable trunking down a four-hundred-year-old pillar.
The feast calendar is the distinctive thing. Alongside the major dates, almost every village chapel keeps its own feast, and these are genuinely significant local occasions with processions, decoration and a diaspora that plans visits around them. The Goan diaspora is old and widely spread — the Gulf, Britain, Portugal, East Africa — and the people watching a village chapel feast from abroad may outnumber the people at it.
Distance is the honest caveat. Goa is a long way from Bengaluru, so a single ordinary Mass is rarely worth the journey. Feast days, weddings, installations and anything multi-day are.
What we do
The parts that make up the job.
Parish and chapel feast days
Including the procession, which in a Goan village feast is frequently the part the diaspora most wants to see.
Mass in Konkani and English
Streamed to the parish's own channels, for congregations spread across four continents.
Weddings and funerals
The family occasions where much of the family is abroad and cannot travel in time.
Heritage-sensitive installation
Discreet, minimally invasive, and designed around what may not be fixed to the building.
The season
The Goan year
A near-continuous feast calendar, plus the season everything else competes with.
Feast of the Three Kings
Kept at several churches with processions and a large local turnout.
Carnival and Lent
Secular and church calendars adjacent, competing for the same crews.
Holy Week and Easter
The peak of the church year, and busy across every parish.
Village chapel feasts
Almost every chapel keeps its own. Locally significant, and heavily watched from abroad.
Feast of St Francis Xavier
Early December at Old Goa. The largest single occasion in the Goan Catholic year.
Christmas
Overlapping peak tourist season, which makes accommodation and access the real constraint.
How it runs
How a Goa booking works
- 01
Establish what may be touched
Heritage restrictions come first. They rule out a large part of conventional practice before any design starts.
- 02
Solve the acoustics
High, hard, empty buildings are the hardest rooms we work in. Source and mic placement matter more here than almost anywhere.
- 03
Plan the procession
For a village feast this is often the main event for those watching from abroad.
- 04
Book around the season
December is peak tourism as well as peak feast. Access and accommodation are harder than the production.
Why Gloworks
One crew, one roof, start to finish.
We design for buildings we cannot drill
Heritage restrictions are the starting point, not an obstacle discovered on the install day.
Hard acoustics taken seriously
A four-hundred-year-old church is the worst room for intelligibility and the best argument for spending on audio.
The chapel feast matters
A village feast is not a small job because the chapel is small. Its remote audience is often larger than its local one.
Honest about the journey
For a single Mass we are probably not the right answer. For a feast, a wedding or an installation, we are.
Where we work
Around Goa
North and South Goa — Panaji, Old Goa, Margao, Mapusa, Vasco, Ponda and the village parishes between them.
- Panaji
- Old Goa
- Margao
- Mapusa
- Vasco
- Ponda
- North Goa
- South Goa
Frequently asked
The questions we get every week.
Our church is a heritage building. Can you install anything?
Usually yes, but designed quite differently. Freestanding or clamp-mounted positions, wireless where it can be made reliable, and audio taken from what the building already has rather than fixing a new system to a protected wall. It takes longer to design and it is the right way to do it.
The sound in our church is terrible. Is that fixable?
Improvable, certainly. High ceilings and hard surfaces make these among the most difficult rooms in the country for intelligibility, and the fix is getting the source close to the speaker rather than trying to capture the room. Some acoustic treatment helps, but microphone placement does most of the work.
Is a village chapel feast too small to be worth covering?
No — and it is a common misjudgement. The chapel may be small but the Goan diaspora is old and widely spread, and the number of people watching from the Gulf, Britain or Portugal often exceeds the number present.
When is Goa hardest to book?
December. Peak tourist season overlaps the Feast of St Francis Xavier and Christmas, which makes access, accommodation and crew availability harder than the production itself.
Keep reading
Which feast, and which church?
Goan buildings need designing around rather than quoting for. Tell us both and we will come and look.