Ringing Forums

Not much cover for the over 70s, which must be about half of ringers these days.

Consider the following hypothetical scenarios: I turn up at a practice. It is not an association event, I am not a member of the band. I am asked to stand by a ringer to keep them right in a touch of Bob Doubles. It quickly becomes clear that the ringer is not a safe handler. They miss the sally, get tangled in the rope and are seriously injured. Maybe I intervene maybe I don't. Either way they sue me.
After the ambulance and rescue service have left we decide to ring the bells down. This time I miss my sally, The stay and slider stay in tact but a gudgeon breaks, the bell hits the side of the frame and cracks. Again I am sued.
I am not covered by my household insurance.
In the above circumstances what insurance is covering my legal fees, costs, fines and compensation payable if the location is a) a church and b) a secular building. Am I relying on any insurance cover that might, or might not, be provided by one of the ringing organisations to which I belong and might the overall situation within ringing be regarded as satisfactory?

I, for one, don't and it is one of my big worries; particularly third party cover. Whenever I have looked cover provided by guild/associations the cover always seems minimal. It is one reason why I would like to be in a national membership organisation with decent insurance cover and legal back up.

Teaching needs to be taken away from local towers. New teachers need to be teaching in a supportive school environment. What we are doing is, in effect, putting probationary teachers into failing schools and wondering why things are not getting any better.

We seem to be stuck with far too many ringers, particularly many in key roles, who don't seem to be able to envisage operating in any way that is different to the way it had been done for a century or more.

At the moment I see enthusiasm for getting things going but the things that are being got going are the same things that were not working very well before, at least in terms of T&D.

ART has given us a curriculum and a teacher training college but there are far too few schools in which productive teaching can take place.

Whether it is possible to set up an adequate number of schools I don't know but at the moment there seems to be an awful lot of teaching time being wasted with learners who, for a number of reasons, are not going very far slowly.

I am sorry that you have to reply on the good will of others ( I assume this is at traditional local tower practices?) This is why we need to set things up outside of the traditional tower structure. You might still have to travel.

The photos on the web page from your link are typical of the first couple of decades after the war; one or two middle-aged or elderly and a bunch of youngsters. Have a look on BellBoard now and it tends to be the other way round.

What are the prospects of the remaining 20 ringers in your area working together as one unified band (if they don't already) and concentrate on training and development? What are the experience levels of those 20? Are any of the bells/locations suitable for use as a training centre/school (if it is not already?)

I think that there are a number of different ringing planets and ringer's perspectives are heavily determined by how things are where they ring. This drives a range of very different opinions on how things are and what solutions might be possible. I am sure there are areas where things are just dandy and areas that are lost beyond redemption. What I have trouble with is getting an overall feel of the total picture.

Personally i would like to see a national list like yours above to give us some idea.

I accept that this is most unlikely to happen. Folk will not provide the data. And it would of course go nowhere near telling the full story of the state of affairs, but it would be a start. And as is often mentioned it would be of little use pulling the numbers from annual reports. There are plenty of towers I guess with seeming ample ringers on the books who meet short on Sunday.

And if a full listing is not going to take place we need to get some sort of picture somehow.

Going back to Simon's post at the top of the thread, I think that in terms of keeping bells ringing there is not that big a problem. There are plenty of ringers about and the old guilds and associations keep the social networks going. The real problem is method ringing. That is where we need to get a grip. The ideas are there, we now need widespread implementation urgently.

I think that Cheltenham St Mark might have one, or at last did.

Realistic numbers would be helpful. There are incentives to keeping inactive ringers on the books. One is the number of CC reps that can be sent to the annual bash. If it were one rep per association that incentive would disappear. Another is the loss of subs (some towers pay members subs which keeps income going).

I am not convinced that we do necessarily have a good enough grip on basic data such as the number of active ringers, what is rung, and the age profile. A detailed breakdown of the over 60 age profile, a detailed breakdown of the age profile of those ringing peals and quarters above ART level 5, and detailed information of geographical differences would be interesting. Our impressions of how things are might well be right but it would be good to have them confirmed and kept up to date.

We also need to get a good idea of ringers' hopes, dreams and wishes. Any proposals for the future have to match with reality. You can't expect ringers in their 70s and 80s to behave as if they were 50 years younger.

A few years ago I would have agreed with you. Not now.

Sounds like a plan. Regular updates in the RW showing compliance for each association in keeping the details fully up to date might provide an incentive. Without some sort of moral pressure many will not bother.
Data, data, data should be the mantra; comprehensive and up to date. This has to be the starting point. We are flying blind without it.

ART has been excellent at providing a curriculum and training teachers. But we are still woefully short of schools for the teachers to teach in and the learners to learn in. I believe that there are some ART hubs and schools going but nothing like enough. They should be the norm for training and development rather than an unusual exception. Whilst there is some enlightenment most of the thinking and organising is still rather 19th century. The ideas are there; it is getting people to adopt them is the issue.

I guess that the parents bringing children to ring at Moseley are not currently using a foodbank.

AJB

Too may people have got too much financial investment in the existing economic model for it to change. Too many ringers have got too much emotional investment in the existing ringing organisational model for it to change.

Bottom left hand corner after the last post.

As with much in ringing practice, not ringing in Holy Week does not hold up well to scrutiny. Any case for not ringing before Maundy Thursday is somewhere between thin and non-existent. As noted above by high church tradition you would not ring on Good Friday or Good Saturday but would ring earlier in the week. Evangelicals would probably look to the Bible but I not think there is any direct help there; nothing to say you can't ring in Holy Week that I am aware of.

At the church where I learnt to ring we rang half-muffled for the Good Friday service and rang open for weddings on Saturday. Ringing open for weddings on Good Saturday is normal and common. If there was a day when the bells should hang silent it is Good Saturday.

Ringing for weddings on Good Saturday but not ringing during the rest of Holy Week is nonsense.

But persisting in doing daft things in ringing is so common place to be utterly normal.

No sign of any log books or certificates. Locally I would say that the Level 1 equivalent is ok, Level 2 equivalent is being skated over bringing problems at attempts at method ringing. Couple with that the problem in assembling strong supporting bands the result is slow progress and a lot of wasted training time.

At the handful of towers of my acquaintance I am aware of three of the current ringers who have attended an ART teachers course other that that ART does not seem to figure in any of the teaching and unless they are doing it and I am not noticing Learning The Ropes is not used. So we don't get anywhere near wondering about the strengths and weaknesses of the ART approach.