A ringing endorsement

Senior Features Writer

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Early on Friday morning Belle Spence will leave her home in Unst to travel the couple of miles to Skaw beach where she will stand near the most northerly house in the United Kingdom and at precisely 8.12am she will start to ring a bell.

UNIVERSAL APPEAL: Martin Creed rehearses for Friday's national event with children at St Andrew's and St George's Church in George Street, Edinburgh.

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Teddy Jamieson reports on an artist’s plan to herald the opening of the Olympics 2012

An antique bell, kindly loaned by the Unst Boat Haven, originally used by the Baltasound Herring Station to signal when fish were going to be auctioned on the beach.

At the same time all over the UK (and even further afield) others will join in. In the New Forest 600 girl guides will be ringing bells at an Olympic-themed camp. On the River Thames hundreds on board the HMS Belfast will do the same. On the isles of Scilly people outside St Laurence's Church, the most westerly church in the country, will be ringing their bicycle bells to complement the church bells that will be peeling within.

All over Britain church bells will be ringing to mark the opening of the London Olympics. Parliamentary bells at Holyrood, Stormont, Westminster and the Senedd will sound. In Scotland people will be ringing bells at St Giles Cathedral and Glasgow Cathedral. Members of the parish of Dunkeld handbell group will lead a procession through the town and on the Scotsman Steps in Edinburgh hundreds will gather for mass bell-ringing organised by the nearby Fruitmarket Gallery. Although she won't know it, Belle Spence will not be alone. "I think that's the amazing part," she says. "That someone from this far north could be part of the Olympics. It's amazing. It gives me butterflies in my stomach when I think of it. It's just something else."Actually, she has been part of the Olympics already. The 59-year-old grandmother carried the torch when it made its way to the Shetlands last month. And now she's taking part in the Cultural Olympiad. Her bell-ringing is part of artist Martin Creed's big idea. The Lenzie-born, London-based Turner prize winner wanted to make a noise. "He said he genuinely wanted to hear what all the bells ringing at one time would sound like," explains Leonie Bell (yes, there is an awful lot of nominative determinism going on in this article). Bell is the creative programmer for London 2012 and Glasgow 2014. And she's as excited about the idea for Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes (to give it it's formal title) as Spence. It's the simplicity of it that appeals, she suggests. "Martin Creed is really expert at that. He sees the obvious that we're all kind of blind to and he makes it into something that's creative. And sometimes the best things in really big projects like the Cultural Olympiad are the ones that are just about one idea that is so utterly simple that we all find it compelling.""It's quite a traditional idea, yet the notion of everybody doing it in quite a chaotic, discordant way makes it also quite subversive. Bell-ringing is a great tradition but the way that Martin is enabling us all to do it is a bit more edgy, I guess."Up in Unst Spence admits that it's the Olympic connection rather than the artistic involvement that is the reason for her excitement. "We always watch the Olympics and my husband and I are going down to Hampden to watch the women's football." She is, if truth be told, a little fuzzy on Martin Creed. "I think I've heard the name. I don't know much about the work though. What does he actually do then?"Presumably those who gather on the Scotsman Steps in Edinburgh –steps that Creed himself renovated – will be more clued in. That's where Leonie Bell will be on Friday morning. "I'm going to go with my two older children – if I can get them up early enough to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh." But she's intrigued by the idea of Belle Spence standing on a beach as far north as you can go in Britain. "There's something so lonesome about the thought of that happening at the same time as all these other ones. She'll be connected and part of something but won't have any idea that she's connected and part of something until she hears it on the radio and watches it on the telly. There is something quite poignant about that."What Creed himself is doing for All the Bells (to give it its handy title) is still a secret. But Bell says he's been rehearsing. "I'm sure he will have something spectacular." Then again, it will still just be one part of the grand scheme, a scheme that will peel all the way out from London to the very extremities of the country creating a portrait in sound of a nation, what it shares and what makes it distinctive (Leonie Bell reckons Scottish bell-ringing will sound very different to English bell-ringing for example). And then, at 8.15am on Friday, it will stop. Job done, Belle Spence will go off to her work as a receptionist in the local surgery, chimes still ringing in her ears.It's still possible to register to take part in All The Bells. Just visit www.allthebells.com for details.

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A ringing endorsement

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