The final session of 6 in our Learn to Ring Course at All Saints Broad Chalke was held on Saturday 2nd March.
The course started in January with a taster session where six potential learners came along and were given an overview of what bellringing is all about, were shown the bells and how they work, given a flavour of the history of bellringing and finally we outlined the commitment required to learn how to ring. There was a chance to ask questions and meet the teachers, before we asked them if they wanted to sign up for the rest of the course and learn to ring. Five students did so, one was not able to as they were going to India for 3 weeks, (not that I was at all envious…but I’ll be following them up!)
Over the 5 weeks of practical sessions we worked through the ART Learning the Ropes Scheme with the learners, and they all had around 1.5 hours rope time each session. By the end of the 5 weeks they could all ring a bell independently, recover if there were any hiccoughs and had practised initial stages of raising and lowering. We rang a few rounds on the last two sessions to give them a flavour of what comes next, and have arranged that the teachers from the course will be following them up in their local towers to prevent any bad habits creeping in…
Everyone, teachers and learners seemed to have really enjoyed the process, and there is a lot of enthusiasm going forward. They have all been given the goal of ringing for the 80th D-Day commemorations on 6th June, and we are planning as course reunion later in the year.
And, an added bonus; three teachers now have enough supervised teaching time to undertake their ART Module 1 Assessments and move to accreditation.
Vicki Rowse
Course organiser
(and Guild Master – Ed)
