What a blast!

The Let’s Ring! team were delighted to be asked to judge last month’s entries and what a grand selection we had to choose from! We so enjoyed watching the videos and the team work to make the decisions.

There were 40 entries covering a huge range of topics and styles from more than 30 ringers from across the country and beyond…

How we made our selection
Six Let’s Ringers, mostly teenagers, volunteered to be our selection panel: Lydia Gallagher, Zoe Bonnett, Yuhan Jiang, Alistair, Ben and Catherine White-Horne.

We split the list of entries giving each judge around six videos to scrutinise. After some concerted watching we each reported back with our favourite plus an optional runner up which narrowed the field to nine finalists.

We then analysed these nine very closely and each picked our own first, second and third, with the competition parameters of Unusual and Interesting forefront in our minds. The total scores then gave the overall winner plus two runners up. There were two Highly Commended entries which we especially wanted to share with you too.

And the winner is……
…… in the words of our young judges

“Tim Handbell Robot” by Tim Hart
This entry scored highly with all of us and stood out as a clear winner.

Ben: “It’s a cool (and well executed) concept and well edited too. It must have taken plenty of time to program.… very innovative and well made.”
Yuhan: “I think it’s a pretty cool concept having footage of someone actually ringing.… I can see that it probably took a lot of work and is actually really well done.”
Lydia: “I think it was cool how he set it up and it was interesting to watch.”
Catherine: “… nice, humorous intro, thumbs up.”

Our runners up
Two entries came in close together as our runners up:

“Blindfolded ringing on handbells” by the Pipe family.
Catherine: “Clever concept, nicely introduced, amazing ringing skills and recorded especially for this competition.”
Alistair: “jus impressive innit [sic] and introduced and a bearable length.”
Yuhan: “… snazzy blindfolds…”.

“Stedman Caters” set to music by Worbey Farell Hurr
Yuhan: “An interesting and very nice twist to how we normally perceive bell ringing…. very different from the majority of ringing videos…. an absolute bop”
Alistair: “I’ve been looking for something like this and here it is.”
Catherine: “I was impressed how the handstroke gap was incorporated into the time signature of the music.”.

Highly Commended
“Surprise Minor Tapped on Glasses” by RP 168
Catherine: “This chap is coming up with new and inventive ideas with a bellringing slant.”

“Pyro Hunt Minimus” by Matthew Tosh
Alistair: “It’s a fun and unique way of making plain hunt on 4 actually interesting 🤪🤪”

Let’s Ring! is the innovative recruitment and training initiative based in Gloucestershire. All our youngsters are looking forward to getting back to our bellropes just as soon as we get the green light!