Happy New Year and welcome to the first LDG newsletter of 2026.
It’s been a busy final quarter for the LDG in 2025 – on the 25th of October we held a very successful LDG AGM at Ashby Folville village hall, thanks to so many of you for turning out for the AGM, we had over 60 members attending the AGM itself and the whole event was superbly organised by the Melton District Secretary (!!).. Thanks also to the District’s for organising their own AGM’s after the LDG AGM, I’m pleased to report that all of the Districts (apart from Syston) have functioning committees.
In case you were not aware, 2026 is the 80th anniversary of creation of the Leicester Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers, formed from the Midland Counties Association. I have put together a cross district group looking at how to mark this occasion and to ensure that the LDG continues to develop in the coming years.
As part of the celebrations we already have merchandise available from Sally Brown, using a great logo designed by Rebecca Banner. Other events being planned include a Ceilidh on June 6th and a ‘Focus ringing month’ in October where we will try to get as many quarters / peals / firsts etc recorded. The plan is to arrange for the Ringing World to hold the details of the quarters back and publish the details in one edition. This should all culminate at the AGM which conveniently falls on the last day of October 2026.
Discussions have been held as to how to best prepare the LDG for the future and this has included making a decision on the Syston District which has had no functioning committee for over 10 years. A proposal is being finalised to split the Syston Towers between neighbouring Districts and to this end, members in the Syston District have been advised of the proposal.
We are also migrating District Secretaries to LDG Google mail addresses rather than using personal emails and home computers to improve our control of data and compliance to GDPR. This sits alongside a review by the District Secretaries of all member data which will prepare the LDG for a possible move to Member Mojo which is an application that automates much of what we do manually in the guild at the moment. Many other Guilds and ART are already using this successfully so it’s proven technology that should lighten our load.
There will be regular updates on any changes in the newsletters and District Secretaries will be circulating information as it becomes available.
On a completely different note, I received an unusual request from Nick Lodge – a sound technician at Curve Theatre – asking if I could locate a bell in B flat for him to record for their production of The Sound of Music. I went one better than that and located a tower with a tonal bell (the tenor in B flat so that the rest of the bells would be in that scale ) at Wanlip. I organised a band to ring the tenor for the single blows that Nick initially requested but then also rang some methods for him to use as background in the production. A comment from Nick once the editing was done- “The bells are all in the show and sounding great!”.
The show is still on and tickets are available if you’re interested https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/the-sound-of-music-2/
Enjoy your ringing through 2026 !
Pete Brown
LDG President
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