What is an Open Striking Competition?
Tea / Coffee and soft drinks will be available
Due to possible continuing covid risk, please bring your own picnic, chair/blanket mug
We will picnic outside if weather permits or in the church / The Stables if wet.
A suggested donation of £3 per adult will be collected on the day to cover costs. Everyone is welcome – non-ringing partners and friends.
To help us with the organisation of this event, please register either yourself or your band by 12 noon on Friday 17th September
Download the flyer to display in your tower Poster – Open Striking Comp and Picnic (1)
Book a ‘One to One’ session on a tied bell, lasting 1 hour, with a friendly, experienced tutor. More details here
Before the AGM Steve Stanford hosted a ‘Ringing Room’ session with Zoom.
If you’re not familiar with Ringing Room – it’s an on-line program, somewhat similar to other computer ringing programs, such as Abel and Bell-Tower, which enables up to 12 people to ‘ring’ together from remote locations. It can be a little tricky if there are time delays, but it’s quite challenging and good fun! If you want to find out how it works and, maybe, attempt some ringing, you’ll need to set up a personal Ringing Room account beforehand at www.ringingroom.com/authenticate (You will need to enter a personal user id (your email address) and create a password to set up your account.)
You run Ringing Room and the Zoom meeting together to join in the ringing. It’s fairly straightforward to do and free to use. Further details will be sent when you sign up for this session. If you have any problems setting up an account, or would like a trial run, please phone or email Steve Stanford (01234 856778 steve.h.stanford@gmail.com
In the meantime, have a look at this Ringing Room which explains more and has a You Tube video which was shown on BBC News!
The Bellringing Survival and Recovery Survey was completed in March 2021. A questionnaire was sent to the 80 churches with 3 or more bells where we have a named tower correspondents. Questionnaires were completed by 63 towers, a 79% response rate! the results are here Results of BACBR Ringing Recovery Survey – FINAL VERSION
You are invited to two workshops, one in April and one in May, which will look at the results and work out what can be done:
Over 55 people attended Chris Pickford’s highly entertaining online talk – Exploring Bedfordshire belfries on Wednesday 21 April. If you missed it, or want to watch it again, it’s on You Tube here. Exploring Bedfordshire belfries with CJP 21 April 2021 – YouTube
In this talk, Chris shared his memories of exploring our belfries and told us about of some of the unusual places he has visited and interesting discoveries he has made.
About our speaker:
Chris Pickford joined the staff of Bedfordshire County Record Office in 1977, becoming County Archivist in 1986. He left in 1998 to become Director of the Church of England Record Centre (CERC) in London. During his time in Bedford Chris served as Ringing Master at St Pauls Bedford, Association Librarian and Technical Advisor, master-minding the Association centenary exhibition (now held in the Assn library).
When Chris arrived in Bedfordshire he had no intention of doing a survey of bells in the county. He had too many other unfinished projects already – although fewer than he has now! But after 21 years in Bedford he left with pretty full details of most towers, leaving behind a series of four books on Bedfordshire Churches and another on Bedfordshire Clockmakers. A spell of ill health in 2018 gave him the impetus to write up all his bell material, and in 2018-9 he paid a number of visits to the county to update his records and fill gaps. His survey is now fully written up but there remains more work to turn it all into the book that he hopes to publish.
This will focus on:
This included:
The Workshop outputs summary is here Summary of Workshop 1 – We’ve done a survey – What next!
The Central Council and Ringing Teachers Survival and Recovery Toolkit mentioned at the workshop can be found here Association of Ringing Teachers :: Survival and Recovery Toolbox
After the success of the Christmas quiz we’re holding another one on Friday 12 March at 7.30 on Zoom. It will be the same format as before:
Different teams for each round will be organized on the night, giving you the opportunity to chat to old friends and new.
BYO drinks and nibbles! The full details are here BACBR Spring Quiz – Advertisement
It will be a fun, light-hearted evening and an opportunity to catch up with all those ringing friends we haven’t seen for such a long time! Please do pass this invitation on to other members and friends who may not be on the Association’s emailing list. We hope that as many of you as possible will join in.
More details are in the BACBR Christmas Quiz – Invitation,