The Stepping Stones
Students progress across 5 distinct stepping stones.
Step 1 - BellStart
BellStart is our programme for teaching you how to handle a bell. We work with you over a period of 8 to 12 weeks to develop a neat and elegant ringing style. Ringing is about technique, not strength. The better your technique the easier you’ll find it as you move on with your ringing adventures.
Step 2 – Foundation Skills
This is where students learn to change the speed of their bell so that they can begin to switch the order in which a group of bells sound.
Step 3 – Introduction to Change Ringing
Here you will begin to dip your toe into the wonderful world of Method Ringing. Methods are bell ringing music. In a method, the order in which bells sound changes all the time as they weave in and out of each other, some going faster, others slower.
Step 4 – Novice Change Ringer
Now that you have mastered the basics, students can move on to more complex methods. You will also learn to ring up and down in peal. That’s when bells move from facing down when they are at rest, to facing up into the sky. “In Peal” means you will be doing this with a team of other ringers.
Step 5 – Change Ringer
The final stage. You will learn new methods and start to ring something called touches. This is where the pattern in which the bells are flowing is tweaked at a moment’s notice.