We will be holding the monthly special 10 bell practice this Thursday - special methods for the evenning - Stedman Caters / Yorkshire Royal / Bristol Royal. All welcome.

A draft itinerary for the District Outing has now been published as follows.
An A4 tower notice is now availalbe on the main website: http://www.portsmouthringers.org

There are also a number of photos attached for those who can't wait until they get there...

Saturday May 2nd 2009 – Itinerary
10.00 – 10.45 Stoke Trister (S. Andrew 6 7-1-13 ST737287)
11.00 – 11.45 Wincanton (SS. Peter and Paul 8 15-1-1 ST712284)
12.00 – 12.45 Castle Cary (All Saints 8 15-0-8 ST639320)
Lunch
2.30 - 3.15 Ansford (S. Andrew 6 5-1-14 ST638329)
3.30 - 4.15 Ditcheat (S. Mary Magdalene 8 24-0-4 ST626363)
4.30 - 5.15 Evercreech (S. Peter 10 21-0-10 ST650387)
5.30 – 6.15 Pylle (S. Thomas a Becket 6 10-0-13 ST607383)
6.30 – 7.15 East Pennard (All Saints 5 24-3-9 ST597375)

The seminar on Recruitment & Retention held on 7th March 2009 at Shedfield, turned out to be a great success.  The event was well attended and almost all of the Towers in the District were represented, much to the delight of the organisers.  Feedback from the event was very positive.  Time was spent listing ways and ideas for gathering recruits. Two sessions of practical teaching people to teach beginners were held by Mike Winterbourne.

The committee are now circulating  information on:  the list of ideas developed, and  resources available to all Towers, including Resource list of Weblinks, One Per Learner Books, Posters for Recruitment etc.

Follow up planning is underway with a further training day proposed once Towers have had a bit of time to see who they can recruit.  In the meantime if your Tower needs help either with Teaching or Recruiting  then contact.  District Secretary  who can arrange ringers to assist .

District Initiative To Help Towers to Get New Members into Ringing

Over the last six or so months the District  Committee has identified that there is a need to go and find fresh blood for the longer term future of bell ringing in the district.
After discussion in committee and at the district ADM with members of the district, a seminar on Recruitment & Retention is being organised on 7th March 2009 9.30am till 1.30 pm

The Idea is a practical session to teach existing ringers to be able to teach new recruits run by Mike Winterbourne. Some people who have never rung have agreed to be guinea pigs on the day.
Plus there will be sessions describing some initiatives that have worked well at particular towers in the past few years, plus a general open discussion on all avenues that can usefully be tried out. to find and hold onto new ringers.

Individual towers will then need to look at what they think is the best course of action for them. The District Committee will then follow on, to see what success there has been and if there is anything that can be provided to individual towers to make things work for that tower. It may be that helpers for beginners will be appropriate or some other resource that the district can provide.

Is someone going from your Tower? All are wellcome. Just let the District Secretary know for numbers.
The District Committee is trying to get at least one person from each tower to this event.
So far just over  half  the Towers in the district are sending someone....so it will be a good event.

Due to continuing work on the church tower, Portsea bells are still out of action until further notice.
The latest information is that it is now likely that the tower will not reopen until Summer 2009.

Portsmouth Cathedral Ringers held a brainstorming session on Saturday  to launch an appeal to raise funds for the augmentation from Ten to Twelve Bells.
A storming Curry cooked by the tower captain Richard acted as the inducement to attend. A wide range of ideas were put forward and an action plan developed.
You can expect to hear more about this over the coming months.


If you would like to donate to the project , then all contributions are greatfully received. 
Contact : Tower Captain - Richard Harrison

Perhaps you might go the whole hog and give One or even Two Bells in memory of a loved one, to ring over the city of Portsmouth for many years to come.
Alternatively you can contribute what you can on a smaller scale. The cost of the project is likely to be around £35,000.
The augmentation  project will add the only 12 Bell Tower in the District , as well as giving Portsmouth a fine set of bells in keeping with its size and history as a city.

News and Events site launched

 To try and make better use of some of the dynamic tools on the internet these days, I have created this Google site to allow Officers to publish snippets of news and publicity, and to incorporate a Google calendar for the District events.