Tag: #learning

I tube, me tube, we all tube on YouTube

One of my volunteering roles is as Public Relations Officer for the Essex Association of Change Ringers and I have been looking at our online presence recently. We have a website https://eacr.org.uk/ a Twitter account, Facebook page and an Instagram profile @essexbells. All of which need some work on to make them better at engaging with our members and our external audiences and stakeholders. The one thing we didn’t have yet was anything on YouTube.

Well that’s all changed now and I’m pleased to announce that the Essex Association’s YouTube channel is now live. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwQcGeDDYSzKVw-m4huwKZw The difficulty being, with no actual ringing meetings, competitions, dinners, socials or other events actually happening, other than online, there’s not a lot to post.

Never fear though. I’ve kicked off with a recorded training module based on the ART and Central Council of Church Bellringers recruitment and retention workshop, and it would be great to get some other training materials posted too.

The other thing I’ve been doing is recording a series of getting to know people interviews with ringers from across the Association. The first one is with the Master and we get to find out a bit more about his work for the Association, his memories of learning to ring and what he gets up to when he’s not ringing. It was really interesting to hear his story and what he enjoys about ringing.

I have 10 other interviews “in the can” ready to upload every couple of weeks or so and a couple more interviews lined up ready to record. I’m looking forward to finding more people to talk to and get their stories.

Its been a great little project to do and I’m not an expert at interviewing, nor at editing, but I think you’ll see over the coming months that my skills have improved a little bit and I am trying to make it look a bit more professional. 😜

I’ve always found it quite sad that although we spend time with people in a ringing room, we know so little about them really. We might get a sense of what they do for work or study and maybe where they may (or may not at the moment) be going for their holidays, but other than that, we probably don’t delve too deeply.

One of my interviewees flies light aircraft, another ski’s regularly, another has spent time with tribes people in Africa and another makes acrylic art. Everyone has something interesting about them and I hope that this series allows others to find that out and sparks different conversations and maybe inspire people to try something different.

Its good to talk 🗣

Learning from experience

On Wednesday evening a select few of us gathered on a video conference as a dress rehearsal for our #bellringing Association AGM which takes place on Saturday, again by video conference. The event is being hosted as a webinar so that only the active participants are visible but other means are available for members to be able to communicate. Having had the experience of a similar event the weekend before I was able to suggest some changes to our plans to avoid any pitfall this time around. Learning from that previous experience will hopefully mean it all goes smoothly.

Early(ish) Friday morning a different select few gathered on the virtual #bellringing platform and video conference to try to ring a quarter peal of Cambridge Surprise Minor. The ringing itself was rather good, very few hesitations. However the technology wasn’t going to play nicely. Before we’d barely started the conductor’s internet had thrown him out and he had to log back on. That happened twice. Things then went along reasonably well until everything just froze. None of the bells rang and the video conference just hung for a few seconds before springing back to life. By then of course it was too late and we had to stop. However, attempting these longer lengths of ringing really does help cement the method into your brain, so if nothing else, we’re a bit more experienced now.

Then, as I mentioned yesterday, I was going to bake some biscuits from a magazine that I’ve had kicking around for yonks. The pic above is the result.

Making the biscuits was simple enough and being the piggies that we are I doubled the qualities. Then came making royal icing from scratch. Something I’d never done before. Well, I got in a right mess. Icing sugar all over place, then the mixture was too stiff for the runouts so improvised which meant that you could no longer see the outline definition. In the end I just chucked it on, added a few sprinkly bits et voila! Something vaguely resembling royal iced butterfly biscuits. At least they’re edible. I learned something new. I also learned that I’m not going to make royal icing from scratch again. I’m sure you must be able to buy it ready made in a tub!