GORDON HALLS RINGING CENTRE

Another relatively quiet year for the Centre with in the region of just 40 training events of one form or another during the year. Whilst still hosting many events for the Whiting Society, they have this year concentrated much of their training in the London area. Of significance this year was the training of four Kilifi ringers from Kenya. The Whiting Society part of this initiative started at the Gordon Halls Centre with a full day of basic training to establish their capabilities before venturing further afield, mostly in the Peak District, where their ringing continued to improve allowing two of the ringers to achieve first quarter peals.

Our Plain Methods sessions have been particularly pleasing this year with a nucleus of ringers making significant progress. These continue to be very productive with those who take part getting good practice and instruction in areas they are not always able to with their own bands. We continue to get a fair mix of ringers from both Derbyshire and Yorkshire, with occasionally others from farther afield. If you feel you may benefit from these sessions visit our website or Facebook page for more information or keep your eye on the email groups for news of these events as they are announced.

Much of my time this year has been spent on updating some of our equipment to allow us to operate using multiple individual laptops concurrently, with teachers and pupils using headphones so as not to disturb other pairs. To facilitate this we have so far obtained two laptops and sets of headphones. We have also made some necessary changes to our hardware to allow us to connect these laptops whilst still using our existing PC for normal “silenced” sessions. With the use of a donated amplifier and 2 speakers acquired from the church's old sound system we have as well improved the sound of the simulated bells in the ringing chamber by placing these speakers at high level. We are also together with the Whiting Society in the process of developing some further changes to our equipment to enable more one to one tuition. During the summer I approached the local church primary school and suggested that there might be a possibility of forming an “after school club” to ring church bells. Twelve children then in year 5 (now year 6) enthusiastically came along for a taster session one lunch time in early July and all signed up to learn. They had a couple of short sessions prior to the school holidays and started in earnest in late September. Two of the group are so keen they have been coming along to our tower practices as well. These two were confident enough to ring for the school's Christingle service in mid December.

As your Ringing Centre I would love to have your suggestions for how we can improve our offering. If you would like to know more, would like to run your own event, would like to become involved in the running of the Centre or just have some ideas, then please get in touch. Brilliant as the facility is it will only remain useful if people get involved.

I look forward to another eventful year with a good number of bookings already in the diary for 2016.

Don Jones