I am very proud of our achievements with young ringers. Yesterday we rang a peal with five of them including three first peals at the first attempt. And we are thrilled to be the current Ringing World Bellboard Featured Performance!
http://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1002402
Abingdon Peal Band at Milton 17-4-2016
We run a very lively practice for young ringers each week in addition to our normal (more advanced) practice and a separate after school ringing club for the local prestigious private school.
The five youngsters in the peal yesterday are the most experienced youngsters out of the thirteen young ringers and around two dozen adults currently in the Abingdon band.
My husband, Brian became tower captain five years ago. He realized that since the excellent ringing teacher we had at the time had warned us he was moving a year later, we needed a new person to take over. So he encouraged me to attend one of the first ART courses . I started teaching ringing, building on the work of the previous teacher and because of my background in running Girl Guides, concentrated on school children aged 10 upwards.
Two of the youngsters I inherited from the previous ringing teacher are now very experienced ringers aged 16 and 18 who help to run the young learner practices (and rang in the peal). Four other members of our band have attended the ART courses and the 18 year old is a fully accredited ART teacher of ringing. It helps to have several teachers in the band! And the LtR scheme with its excellent syllabus is a good way of structuring our practices.
In the Easter holidays we ran our most successful ringing course so far – a two week ringing course for one hour each morning with up to six youngsters learning to ring from scratch. Two of them managed to set their bells for ten hand strokes on the trot before the end of the course. One of them managed ten backstrokes too and earned his LtR1 certificate!
We have run a branch mini-outing for young ringers in each school holiday for over four years. Each outing consists of some ringing plus a social activity of some sort (treasure hunts, sports, visits, etc.) each time. It has enlivened the young ringer scene throughout the branch.
It’s very time consuming and some weeks we walk home from the young learner practice wondering how we can calm down the chaos in the tower. But it is worth it when we see how enthusiastic they all are and how much they enjoy the outings. And I’m pleased to report that half the Oxford Diocesan Guild band for the RWNYC this year is from Abingdon (and were in the peal yesterday)!
I think we in Abingdon, with the help of ART and LtR, are bucking the trend of decline we see in so many towers.