Background

Sophie started learning to ring at Harborne in Birmingham during the school summer holidays in 2014. She was enrolled on to the ART Learning the Ropes scheme from the outset and completed the programme at the end of July 2016. She has become an integral part of our local band at Harborne, regularly ringing for services on Sundays, weddings, attending our weekly practice and involving herself in tower social events. She does get out and about to other practices from time to time, but school and commitments to other activities make these occasional visits rather than regular commitments. After completing the 5 LtR levels, she has moved with relative ease on to ringing on higher numbers, comfortably extending Grandsire Doubles to Triples. The confidence has now spurred her on to attending Sunday service ringing at Birmingham Cathedral, where she is getting opportunities to ring on higher numbers.

Sophie’s achievements to date:

• 15 quarter peals
• LtR Level 5 – July 2016
• LtR Plus – Doubles module
• LtR Plus - Triples module
• LtR Plus - Calling First Quarter Peal module

Sophie has shown herself to be a capable ringer with considerable promise. Since attaining Level 5 her further achievements have come thick and fast and deserve recognition.

Conducting

One of the high points of 2016 came very recently, when just six months after completing the LtR scheme, Sophie called her first quarter peal – Grandsire Doubles on 11 December. It had only been a few weeks before that, as her mentor, I had suggested that she might like to consider calling a quarter peal. In preparation Sophie began by calling plain courses of Grandsire and quickly progressed to a standard 60 and from thence a standard 120 changes.

The quarter peal was a confident and faultless performance by Sophie. Although she stuck to calling herself as the observation bell throughout, she had planned what she would call – rotating the single and observing how this affected the order.

The confidence that Sophie has gained from her preparation has benefited our band on Sundays as she now regularly calls call changes and Grandsire Doubles for the service touch.

Now that Sophie has called her first quarter peal she is beginning to look at calling the same 120s from different bells. In addition she is working towards calling a quarter peal of Plain Bob Doubles.

As and when an opportunity arises we are planning for her to attend a conducting course. In the mean time we are encouraging her to call simple touches as often as possible

The Learning the Ropes Achievement Awards

Winner: Sophie Keeble