How can you beat going to the June SCACR General Committee meeting?

What we talked about:-

Membership Trends

As you might expect, has been a small fall in membership numbers this year. Sue Gadd has produced a very useful tool showing trends over the last four years which can be broken down with District and Tower by Adult members, Junior members and Long-service members. Coloured graphs add to the excitement! Very useful for District Secretaries to highlight where there are ongoing problems at individual towers, and, perhaps, to pick up good practice from the more successful towers.

Bell Restoration Fund

Taking into account recent promised grants, the balance in the fund could well be less than £1,000 if all the grants are taken up. We need to boost the income into the fund to meet future demands. As well as the usual fund-raising activities - e.g. raffles, collections, etc – should we be asking our members to consider setting up a regular standing order using Gift Aid. Or perhaps asking them to round up their annual subscriptions. How about it? (Contact Sue Gadd for details - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Getting Back to Ringing

Districts are in the process of contacting local Towers to assess the level of support the need. Those towers that have restarted ringing have received very positive feedback from the community.

We will continue to run our 4-6 p.m. Saturday afternoon Ringing Room training session until Covid restrictions ease further. At present these extend from Plain Hunt Doubles up to Stedman Triples and are much appreciated by those taking part. We do need more helpers to keep these going. Can you spare an hour or two on a Saturday afternoon, either occasionally or on a regular basis? If so, contact Jonathan (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Going forward, we realise that many of us are apprehensive about going back to the tower. Accordingly, the Districts will be looking to establish at monthly “real” ringing sessions to give people the confidence to ring actual bells. The plan is also to continue our Ringing Room sessions, but perhaps on a monthly basis.

Young Ringers

Young Ringers have been meeting across the county. Future afternoon gatherings planned are:

• 13 June: Heathfield
• 27 June: Arundel
• 18 July: Rodmell (probably)
• 30 July: outing to Hastings

Do encourage any youngsters (25 or under) to come along. Contact Marisa for details (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Jonathan Franklin