The October YouTube competition for Most effective instructional video has been won by “Church Bell Installation at Great Gransden”, a lighthearted look at belfry maintenance by Phillip George. The video can be found here.

The judges, Bruce and Eileen Butler from Philadephia, had this to say about their deliberations:

“When Simon asked us to judge this competition, we gladly accepted the challenge but didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it turned out to be.  We had thirteen videos to watch and they ran the gamut from less than 2 minutes to the length of a feature film.  There were some “oldies” and some that were produced during the pandemic.

The entries covered a wide range of topics from counting, raising, maintenance, virtual and simulated ringing and conducting.  We used as our criteria the definitions of the words: effective, instructional and video.  So, we were looking for an entry that contained moving visual images as well as being successful in producing a desired educational/informative result.  This rubric enabled us to eliminate several of the entries and fine tune our selection of the finalists.

Unfortunately, several videos were poor in quality, others too long, but nonetheless, they all had good content.  We also thought that the Conducting Doubles methods video and Prof Belfry Counting video covered material and gave presentations not readily found elsewhere.

Highly commended is Steve Askew’s An Introduction to Change Ringing which we think is a useful tool for recruitment and Graham Nabb’s Ringing a Bell Up demonstration.

In second place, we selected the short but good and well explained Handstroke Grip and Pull.  Our choice for the prize is the Church Bell Installation at Gt Gransden.  This video met all of our criteria.  It was the right length, creative as well as informative and its unusual approach made it entertaining as well as effective.  As an aside, when we finally get to return to ringing, it will be necessary to check out the bells and perhaps do some routine maintenance that has been overlooked since March.

In conclusion, we thought that most entries had good content and merit worth watching and we think that this series of competitions has kept our energy levels high while we are unable to ring tower bells.”

The customary £25 Amazon voucher will be winging its way to Phillip, meaning he may be able to treat Henry to a new bag!

This was the penultimate round in the series of YouTube competitions, started in March with the hope it would have helped get us through lockdown and beyond. The final round is for the ‘Film that promotes ringing in the most positive way’ and entries can be submitted by the end of the month. We are now looking for something to fill its place!