Our Guild representative, Ann Martin, has provided some notes from the last General Committee Meeting of the Oxford Diocesan Guild of bell ringers, held in November 2017.
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- There is a vacancy for the General Secretary for the Finance and General purposes committee. If anyone is interested, contacts are on ODG website.
- Education committee: Applications for the Michaelmas and Steeple Aston courses were up this year.
They are asking for help to organise the Michaelmas, Steeple Aston and Radley courses this year, in particular, for Steeple Aston, for arranging and booking the towers. Anyone who would like to volunteer should contact the Education committee, contacts on ODG website.
It is the 25th Radley course this year. They would like to hear from people who attended the first Radley course (and any other of the Radley courses).
- The Dove database is going to be brought up to date and re-housed on the Central Council’s server.
- Subscriptions remain as last year, £8 per member.
- There was a presentation about the new Guild website. In due course, they will be nominating a person from each branch to provide updates for their area.
- There was discussion on the suggestions in Ringing World for ringing on 11th November 2018. The suggestion was to ring muffled in the morning for 11 am, then remove the muffles and ring open later in the day. It was considered that it would be dangerous to remove the muffles with the bells up, but it would cause confusion to ring them down and then ring them up again.
The committee will relay the discussion to Ringing World.
- Safeguarding: Discussions are still ongoing with the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer, in particular with reference to the difficulty in having a safeguarding officer in each tower. This is still to be resolved.