| Central District | Keith Baines and Gill Hughes |
| Chesterfield District | Karen Jeffrey and Don Jones |
| Peak District | Philip Mehew and Ian Sterritt |
| Southern District | Nick Danes and John Heaton |
The main training day was moved to May this year in order to ease the demand for local towers in November when the Yorkshire Association base their main training day around the Gordon Hall’s Ringing Centre. This did not prove to be such a good idea because we found that many of our usual helpers were committed to weddings at their own towers and some of the local towers were also unavailable due to weddings. However we did manage to support 24 students on 5 different sessions.
The demand for Plain Hunt and Bob Doubles never seems to decrease, one might think that these methods were more suited to local or district training and that at Association level we might be asked to give training in slightly more complicated methods but that is rarely the case and we often struggle to fill the places on a session for anything more complicated than Plain Bob. While the need is there we will put on whatever people want.
During the year Mike Banks and Robin Lyons held a more practical bell maintenance course at Youlgreave, which was very well received. A continuing course on conducting was started by John Heaton using Sunday afternoons on the simulators at Eckington and Derby Cathedral.
Early in the year we were asked what we could do for the Hartington would be ringers who were anxious to learn to ring before their bells arrived. The committee thought long and hard about this request and we felt that The Gordon Hall’s Ringing Centre was the place to do this training as it showed the best environment for teaching and had all the aids on hand.
Two Introduction to Ringing sessions were held at the centre attended by over 20 would be ringers. These sessions covered a little history of ringing and a bit about belfry management and organisation. Those present then climbed to the belfry to watch a bell being raised and rung and then listened to rounds and method ringing in the ringing room. They were also given a proposed plan of action for teaching them to ring.
Three ‘Teaching Handling’ days followed at the Ringing Centre where 6 pupils on each day were taught to handle a bell. All pupils were very keen and asking when they could come back for more training. Follow up sessions were arranged. In all 17 ringers were handed over to the Peak District who have organised further sessions at Bakewell and allocated ringers in smaller groups to towers around the district.
This intensive training at the Ringing Centre worked very well and everyone involved with the training was very impressed with how appreciative the Hartington ringers were and how willing they were to travel quite a distance for training.
There are many towers around who receive help from either neighbouring towers or other regular visiting ringers and these ringers give up a lot of their time to help towers out as well as attending their own practice night. Sometimes if you want to make progress you need to get out and visit another tower yourself you cannot always expect the help to come to you. The Hartington ringers have no choice but to get out and about as their bells are not yet installed, they have shown a willingness to seek out training and others could do well to follow their example. Talk to your tower captains or regular helpers and ask about nearby towers who could help you move forward. Many towers would be very happy to have just one or two extra people on their practice night who were keen to gain extra experience. There are the opportunities to progress but sometimes you need to get out from your own tower to do this. Help is around but need to seek it out.