Ringing Forums

It really depends on local circumstances. At Northington, the ring of six near here augmented from three in 2018, the population of the village was 221 in 2011. According to the Diocesan Website the average Sunday before Covid was 10 and they are in a benefice with eight other churches and have one Sunday service each month. The parish asks each visiting band of ringers for a minimum donation of £30. I suspect that would not be sustainable each week if your band were to ring in a festival or redundant church, but this is something that the exercise may have to grapple with more often in the future.

In 2011 New Alresford had a population of 5,431 and Old Alresford on the opposite bank of the river Arle had a population of 571. Following Ring for the King, we have used Old Alresford as our main teaching tower, first with a simulator, and since May 2024 we have been ringing the bells ‘open’ for practices and regular training sessions, with ringing often twice or even three times a week. As there is no sound control, Old Alresford bells are clearly audible in much of New Alresford on the opposite side of the river. We post regularly in the local Facebook group and many residents have commented that they like hearing the Alresford bells ringing out. We even received a thank you card and box of chocolates last week!

There is development of 300 new houses going up in New Alresford and the church is very focussed on attracting young families. Evensong is now just once a month, with family orientated teatime services taking place instead. Also, the 9.30am Communion is now only twice a month, with breakfast church and other forms of service more attractive to families replacing it on the other weeks. The ringing of bells is less relevant to these non-traditional forms of worship, although the suggestion that we form a handbell-tune ringing group aimed at young families, and also set up an after-school tune ringing group was warmly welcomed by the Clergy.

I don’t know much about Landbeach, apart from a quick Google search. I see that you are about 5 miles North of Cambridge, and had a population of about 825. The other parish in the benefice is Waterbeach on the other side of the A10. This had a population of 5,500 in 2019. According to Dove, St John’s Waterbeach has a unringable five dating back to 1791, hung in an even older frame. I understand that since 2022 a major development of 6,500 new homes is taking place in Waterbeach, including three new primary schools and a new secondary school.

With limited financial resources, and ageing congregations, the Church of England needs to focus it’s resources not on ancient buildings, but on the worshippers of the future. If we are to safeguard the future of ringing, we need to focus our resources too on the ringers of the future. Whilst it is important to maintain access to ring the bells at Landbeach and many other rings of bells in a similar situation, we also need to be looking at opportunities for the future. I don’t know anything about Waterbeach, but opening up a dialogue with St John’s would seem a very useful step to take. It seems from what I have read that there will be a critical mass of population there to maintain a very active church, and to grow a local band, and you may then have sufficient ringers to ring both sets of bells, as we have done in our benefice at Alresford.

Taking on something like this may seem daunting, but rather than a traditional bell restoration project, developing a bellringing project focussed on engaging with the wider local community, particularly young families, may be both attractive to the church, and also help unlock access to substantial external funding.

Many of these BRF's were set up in the 1960's and 1970's. In 1972 the Central Council conducted a survey of ringing and there were 4,962 towers with five or more bells in the British Isles. Of those that completed the survey, over 8% were classed as unringable or unsafe. Today, according to Dove only 4.4% of towers with 5 or more bells are classed as unringable and the number of towers with five or more bells in the British Isles has increased from 4,962 to 5,738. All thanks to the work of BRF's and projects such as Ring in the Millennium.

Over the next few decades many of these churches with bells are likely to have a handful of services each year, or even close for worship. The challenge is going to be to retain access so that future generations of ringers can ring them, and even to have a future generation of ringers. The challenge is also going to be to change the deeply embedded culture and move away from narrowly focussed BRF's to one where Guilds and Associations are charities with a much wider remit to safeguard ringing.

Possible actions could also include giving larger grants, or widening the scope of work that the BRF will fund, such as refurbishing all those dingy ringing chambers or paying for professional bell hangers to visit and train local steeple-keepers. The Trustees could also consider the merits of registering the whole Guild/Association as a Charity.

Members shouldn't be a problem either. When consulted, rank and file members of the Essex Association came up with some excellent ideas of how their large bequest could be used. However, perhaps someone from Essex could comment on what has happened since. My understanding is that the status quo has prevailed.

Charity Commission approval shouldn't be a problem. Their guidance is that Charity Trustees have a duty to keep the objects of the charity under review and to spend resources on charitable purposes, and not to accumulate large reserves. Charity Trustees should also seek professional advice where appropriate as the ODG does (and not let reserves lose value in real terms by being kept in short term deposit accounts).

each tower only needs work every 50 - 100 years but then needs a lot of money so it is long term planning — Lucy Chandhial

When I learnt to ring xx years ago, a lot of towers had timber bellframes, with bells hung on timber headstocks and plain bearings. Over the last 50 years, thanks to societies setting up BRF's, a substantial proportion of these have been replaced. Modern engineering is such that in 50 - 100 years only a minor overhaul will be needed, which will be far less expensive. Long term planning needs to focus on the needs of the future, not what we have been used to doing for the last five decades.

The duties of a charity trustee include keeping the objects of the charity under review, so changing them should be something that is considered from time to time. In addition the proportion of subs transferred into the BRF can be changed very easily. Also there is case for considering registering the whole society as a charity, where there is then more flexibility.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66290919b0ace32985a7e6c3/CC3_feb24.pdf

One of our local towers has enough space to walk round the bellframe, so we can safely turn rubber motor cycle tyre muffles through 90 degrees in a few seconds. Wouldn't even consider tying them with the bells up https://ringingteachers.org/application/files/1015/4788/9242/Motor_cycle_tyre_-_bell_silencing.pdf

I think practice augmentation and supporting service ringing are different. At a practice you need a greater number to stretch and develop people whereas service ringing just requires enough to ring something, which can, and probably should, be less stretching. — John Harrison

In our local Hub, by working together since Covid we have been able to gradually increase the number of ringers. One previously silent tower now has a band of ten ringers. We have also been able to grow the number of ringers in a neighbouring benefice by forming a benefice band. One tower had an active team and the other only had a couple of ringers left, and the bells were hardly ever rung The new ringers in this benefice now benefit through having the choice of two practices a week. If ever there was a need to, there are now more than enough ringers in this benefice to ring at both towers simultaneously.

The ringers in both benefices also help each other out if needed to ring ring for weddings, and also attempt quarters and deliver training sessions, which they would not be able to do on their own. We've also recently started helping a third benefice to regenerate their band, They have two towers and nine ringers, of whom a third are over age 70 and another third over 80. The remainder are all over 50.

Teaming up in 'hubs' and 'clusters' like this would seem to be the way forward to safeguard the future of ringing in many other towers.

It's not just science, but there are lots of other subjects in the National Curriculum that are relevant to ringing. In the Alresford ART Hub we have been successful in obtaining a £62k grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund towards restoring the ring of bells at Ropley and a two year follow on project to 'engage new audiences' with the heritage of bells and bellringing. The local history society will be helping us to deliver a 'history detectives' project to the local CofE primary school next year. We are also going to be running an after school tune-ringing club each autumn term in the lead up to Christmas. To quote the head teacher "This sounds like an absolutely splendid opportunity for the children!"

The other parish in the benefice, Bishops Sutton, has also recently obtained a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to re-roof the building. In order to engage new audiences with heritage, they have teamed up with the local secondary school to undertake some history and art projects and display the results in an exhibition space that they propose to build at the back of the church. The church is on the Pilgrims Way, so that also helps.

To support both projects I have therefore looked at the national curriculum for key stages 1 - 6 and undertaken some historical research (the teachers said that I needed place it somewhere where the children could find it, rather than expect them to find it all themselves|). At Primary age, the emphasis is on early history, whereas at Secondary age, the emphasis goes right up to the present day. However I have been able to bring in many aspects including the Norman conquest and the curfew bell, Henry VIII and the Reformation, the Gunpowder Plot, Cromwell, Georgian behaviour, Big Ben, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, the Temperance Movement and the role of women in society etc. Do have a look https://bellringing.co.uk/heritage.htm

But my main concern with the original suggestion of a course which costs £10 per week so that the leader(s) of the course get paid at wedding type rates is that you then have to define who is helping and who is learning — Lucy Chandhial

We can't keep on doing what we have always done. The ringing population has decreased from an estimated 42,000 in 1988 to around 30,000 today. Unless we recruit, train and retain much faster than we have been doing over the past three decades, and at scale, the ringing population will continue to decline

We need to recruit and teach smarter, and we do need to charge for tuition to enable us to do this. Most new ringers expect to pay something. However, I hear the same reasons trotted out by many of the more experienced ringers about why it is difficult to change. The Birmingham School of Bellringing has been running successfully for over a decade and charges £5 per pupil for a 2 hour Saturday morning lesson. The Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre has been running for over 5 years and also charges. Talking to the Cambridge Youths yesterday, it seems that the St Clements centre is experiencing a huge demand from new ringers in Cambridgeshire who cannot get the tuition and support that they need from their local band. The St Clements Centre charges £5 per hour per pupil for each group session, and £10 per hour for 1:1 tuition.

Perhaps the debate needs to change from being about why we are not able to do things like this, to be about why so many other groups are not doing things like this already, showing them what is possible and is working elsewhere, and helping them undertake similar projects.

Overcoming inertia requires brave leadership and decision making plus increased resource. More volunteers, doing more and being better directed is necessary but not sufficient. Funds need to be spent, albeit as wisely as possible. To be sustainable that means increased income. — Paul Wotton

I think that the CCCBR is approaching this from entirely the wrong direction. The CCCBR itself cannot do much on the ground. It is motivated local groups of ringers that will have an impact, and the case for doing something to safeguard the future of ringing in each local area is compelling, in a way that increasing affiliation fees to the CCCBR is not. Today I took the Charmborough Ring to the Society of Cambridge Youths who are hiring it for the Cambridge Folk Festival. They have an excellent system in place to capture the contact details and follow up people who show interest. They also have an excellent teaching centre at St Clements, which is staffed by a part time administrator/teacher in Lynn Hughes. The £245k to set up the teaching centre and employ Lynn for the first two years was raised by the Society of Cambridge Youths.

There are other similar models such as the Birmingham School of Bell Ringing and the Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre, so I am not advocating one particular model. However I would prefer to see the CCCBR focussing on encouraging many other local groups of ringers to set up their own initiatives, and to share good practice. We need several dozen of these initiatives spread round the country. The £40k that the CCCBR are currently agonising over is just a drop in the ocean of what is needed for Ringing 2030 to be successful, and will not in itself achieve very much. However, groups such as the Cambridge Youths have shown that they can raise large capital sums of money, and these projects can be self financing so that they can employ their own admin/teaching staff, in addition to volunteers, and hire mobile belfries too!.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/YLpwoUzBSSikjv2M/

To meet the wide ambition of Ringing2030, the CCCBR could project-manage the course design and aim for a hundred courses per Autumn-term for each of the three years leading to 2030. That would be worth paying an new employed project-manager to do .. — PeterScott

Oh no, more deja-vu. ART have already designed various teacher training courses. This includes producing modern accompanying textbooks and on-line material to help new teachers learn to teach well, and to help their students to learn to ring. ART employs three part time staff to deliver its modules and coordinate its volunteers at a national level, and there are over 40 ART teaching hubs across the UK and overseas teaching ringers, plus many hundreds of individual teachers using the Learning the Ropes scheme. The Mancroft and Cambridge Hubs each also employ a part time member of staff. ART is also delivering around 60 of its teacher training courses each year, attended by over 450 delegates. Therefore I don't see why we should not build on this success, rather than start afresh. It's all self financing too!

The elephant in the room is that there are some out there who are resistant to change, or are unaware of what has been achieved elsewhere, and this is slowing down progress. We have been aware of the current issues facing the exercise for well over three decades. We know what the solutions are, such as group teaching and paid tuition, as they have been discussed many times before, but we keep going round in circles. Just look at the Ringing Centres Committee (1992) Founders Grants and Founders Awards scheme (1994) Education Committee's proposed Instructors Guild (1997) Ringing Trends working group (2000) Network for Ringing Training (2001) Ringing Trends Committee (2004) Ringing Foundation (2007) ITTS and ART (2009) Wellesbourne Conference (2011) Change Ringing for the Future and Regional Forums (2012) CRAG (2016). Ringing 2030 needs to overcome this inertia in order to move forward, and do this in sufficient time so that fewer bands fall below critical mass.

What is needed to progress Ringing 2030 on a volunteer basis are volunteers with the capability, creativity, commitment and capacity to deliver it. Ringers with even three of these characteristics are rare, those with all four vanishingly so. Of these rare people, those of working age are in demand in the workplace, may have the great responsibility of raising children and are struggling to keep up their continuous professional development. They may even be trying to do some ringing. Those that that are retired can struggle with capacity, I know I do. We need to nurture our volunteers, too many of whom are doing too many volunteer roles in ringing to do all of them as well as they would like. — Paul Wotton

Oh dear, if that is true then we are all doomed. It all sounds very depressing.

However, in my experience there are a lot of newer ringers out there with all sorts of useful skills who would be willing to help, if only there was a way of reaching them, before they get ground down by the existing system. Perhaps some articles in Tower Talk would be a start.

I also went along to the RWNYC in London on Saturday and what an excellent day that was. It was great to see well over 300 young ringers participating, plus all their reserves and adult supporters. The ASCY are to be congratulated on the vast amount of imagination and time that they put in to organising the event. It was also great to see all the positive postings on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram during and after the event. The Cornish Campanologist’s postings on TikTok were excellent.

Perhaps there are some lessons here too, where so many people not just in London, but also so many Guilds and Associations up and down the country must have put a vast amount of time and effort beforehand into volunteering and doing something so motivational for the young ringers, and to help safeguard the future of ringing. There were also all the organisations that were willing to sponsor and support the event financially. A Ringing 2030 stand at next year’s contest too, perhaps.

It would also help if offers of help were taken up. Late last year I did offer to help the V&L group with aspects of their work which overlap with my current commitments. I have heard nothing since.

“If you want something done, ask a busy person” Benjamin Franklin

but not all districts have good resources. I would like to see ndividual towers take the initiative too but most are not yet aware of Ringing 2030, — Phillip George

Quite right. I can think of examples where this is the case. Once places have fallen below critical mass, it's far harder to resurrect them, and we're not going to be able to help all of them. Some places will need to remain fallow. Best to concentrate first of those which have not yet fallen below critical mass and reinforce them, then spread outwards.

Evidence that it is being consider can be found in the CCCBR Ringing 2030 Recruitment and Development workplan (See the Reports section at https://cccbr.org.uk/about/workgroups/volunteer-and-leadership/) which contains a number of tasks that relate to liaison/working with ART. — Paul Wotton

It’s on my to do list — Lucy Chandhial

I think the working relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART could be more clearly defined — Lucy Chandhial

I was a member of the Central Council from 1981 and served on several of its committees. I know that little happened between committee meetings, and how easy it was to produce annual reports that implied that something had/was being done. Therefore, please excuse my scepticism. As a result, since 2014, like others, I have put my energies into ART and the Mobile Belfies Trust in order to make things happen.

Whilst on the ‘to do list’, I wonder whether any substantive discussions have actually taken place so far with ART. The fact that one of the workgroup team leaders is not clear about the relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART seems to illustrate my point.

Also, looking at the two documents in the link that you have provided, I find that the Mission and Activity Paper was written in June 2022. I was amused that included a quote from Boris Johnson, but like so much else, things have moved on a lot in the last two years!

The spreadsheet programme seems a little more up to date, but it also seems to be a wish list. The 2024-6 section seems too complicated and out of touch with reality. For example, one activity is to review how Ring For the King (RFTK) campaign matched enquiries with teachers and this review is to take place next year in Q3 2025. However, ART has already done this, and the results are quite interesting. I am sure that ART would share this with you, if asked.

The report and programmes all seem top-down. A bottom-up approach would be far better. Neither the CCCBR or ART can do the work needed at a local level to safeguard ringing. It the ringers a grass roots level in local towers, Districts and Branches that need to do the work. However, in my own Guild nether the Management Committee or the AGM have discussed Ringing 2030. Nor does it feature in newsletters or social media. I suspect it is much the same in many other Guilds and Associations, and Districts and Branches. Without their ‘buy in’ any request for additional central funding or to do anything substantial is going to fall on deaf ears.

I would therefore focus on building up support for Ringing 2030 from the grass roots. Rather than proceed everywhere at once, there is a need for some pilot areas which can show what can be done. There are already successful models to build on, such as Worcester, the Birmingham School of Bellringing, the Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre, St Clement’s Cambridge, and the Barnes and Darlington teaching hubs etc.

It is the Guilds and Associations and their Districts and Branches that have the financial and manpower resources to support many more local initiatives like these. They need to be asked what their plans are for Ringing 2030, and what support they actually need. I know that many of the new ringers that have learnt in the last two years get it, but invariably they are not the ones holding office.

there's an unfilled gap above Level 5 of the Learning the Ropes scheme, which only goes to a level that's just above PB5/6. ART doesn't appear to offer anything for people who want to progress from there to intermediate / advanced method ringing. — John de Overa

You need to think of progression as a pyramid. You need a lot of people at the base to support and feed through to the higher levels. When IITS was first put together it was thought that it would be relatively simple to show new and inexperienced teachers ways of teaching people how to ring Plain Bob and Grandsire Doubles and Plain Bob Minor inside. Hence the original Module 2 course. However, it soon became apparent that a lot of the teachers who wanted to come on these modules couldn't ring one or more of these methods inside themselves, so they wouldn't be able to teach others to do it. Hence Module 2 was split into Module 2F to teach foundation skills. This shows them ways to teach the bell control and the listening skills needed to be able to plain hunt a bell. Module 2C was then about ways to teach people who could plain hunt to ring the treble by ropesight and then ring the three methods inside.

Originally it was also thought that once people could ring these three methods, they could then be responsible for their own progression. However, more recently it has been realised that not only is the teaching of the foundation skills an issue, but many local bands might not be able to progress beyond call-changes. Hence the Learning the Ropes call changes scheme has been introduced.

If you consider Simon Linford's four zones about 50% of ringers are in the Green Zone (up to plain hunt Module 2F/LtR2). A further 40% are in the Blue Zone with methods up to Kent TB Minor inside; then 7% in the Red Zone ringing Cambridge Surprise Minor inside and above, and the remaining 3% in the Black Zone - Bristol Surprise Maximus and above.

I see so many District/Branch practices advertised at the top end of the Blue Zone and into the Red Zone, but there may be just one or two training days aimed at the Green Zone and lower Blue Zone ringers each year. No wonder they are not very engaged. As a helper on the NW Ringing course for the past two years the demand for places at the elementary level was three times the supply, whereas at the intermediate and more advanced levels demand was at or just below the supply. I suspect the same is true of the other long weekend courses. As a helper and group leader on many training days over the last 20 years it has been disappointing to see the same students come back a year later with the same handling faults etc. There has also always been a shortage of helpers.

This is where the investment by the Central Council and Guilds and Associations is needed, in new approaches, and to welcome fresh and innovative ideas.

You will also be welcome to hear that ART has discussed developing more advanced teacher training modules, and has built provision for them into its new release of SmART Ringer. At this year's Annual Conference ART also partnered with the Ancient Society of College Youths and the Society of Royal Cumberland Youths to put on a choice of workshops for teachers on the Sunday, for conducting and ringing more advanced methods on 6, 8, 10 and 12 bells.

More reasons why we need to learn from the experience of the last 15 years, and build on them.

I think the working relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART could be more clearly defined — Lucy Chandhial

That's quite simple to define. ART (formerly ITTS) was established as part of a Central Council imitative in 2007 to bring in external funding to the exercise. It was soon realised that we could not make the case to external funders till there was a training scheme in place - Learning the Ropes for new ringers and what became the ART Modules to train teachers and deliver Learning the Ropes. So the Council invested £10,000 in this in 2009. Many of those involved at the time were previous/current members of the CCCBR Education and Ringing Centres Committees.

Therefore ART is about training new teachers and improving the standards of teaching. It has never been about compelling exiting teachers to become members, However, it has always welcomed their input as 'mentors' to train new teachers and to teach alongside ART members in the ART Teaching Hubs. Even ART's own learn to ring enquires are forwarded to non members when there is no ART member nearby.

However, ART's role is not the promotion of ringing at a strategic level. That's a role for the CCCBR, which can undertake work such as engaging external consultants to design a new branding, design websites, and produce attractive leaflets and marketing collateral. The CCCBR is there to liaise with other external bodies at national level such as the C. of E, the insurers, the Scout Association and the DofE Awards scheme. It can liaise with the national media and support the use of mobile belfies at public events. It can also carry out national surveys on the state of ringing, the number of teachers and their skills, and the numbers of new recruits and retention rates, to help guide future policy. The Council does not need to devise its own separate scheme for the training of teachers and leaders, set up a new system for forwarding enquires, establish its own teaching hubs, or necessarily produce its own up to date teaching and learning material.

The delivery of recruitment and training of new ringers is carried out by ringers in their local towers, and through their local Guilds and Associations and their Districts and Branches. The Council and its workgroups can therefore provide guidance on good practice, including case studies, and encourage those who wish to learn to teach or improve their teaching skills to attend and ART Module, and promote wider use of the Learning the Ropes scheme.

The CCCBR can also provide guidance on finance and investment. Half a century ago the CCCBR Bell Restoration Funds Committee encouraged Guilds and Associations to set up BRF's and register them as charities, as so many rings of bells were then in a poor condition. It carried out a triennial survey, encouraging societies to spend money and not build up large reserves. It encouraged societies to register the whole Guild/Association as a charity as there were other benefits including more flexibility. it also encouraged societies to solicit bequests. This work by the CCCBR has been very successful.

As a result, today the situation is totally different. We have a looming shortage of ringers, and many rings of bells are in good condition. Taken together, nationally Guilds and Associations are now sitting on a large cash pile. If just 20% was invested in people projects in their areas, through the CCCBR now encouraging them to establish training and development funds, it would go a long way. Like the parable of the feeding of the 5,000 I am sure that much more money would then come flooding in if grass roots ringers saw each grant invested in the future of ringing at a number if towers, rather than it being eroded by inflation for over a decade, and then spent on one project, especially those where the parish might not be large enough to support a local band, or where the church might be at risk of closure a decade later.

Please can someone explain (i) where the figure of £11,650 in the cashflow forecast model to set up a recruitment portal comes from? and (ii) why it appears that it will take two years to become operational, when a further £66,600 will then be spent on forwarding on enquires to teachers?

Am I the only one suffering from Deja-vu here? Over a quarter of a century ago the Central Council and its Education, Ringing Centres and Ringing Trends committees spent a lot of time discussing the demographic time bomb and the need to improve the teaching of ringing. In an action reminiscent of the then attitude by some to climate change, in 1999 at Lincoln the CCCBR agreed not to proceed further until the “…Instructors Guild is fully established nationally and is working well”. Roll on a decade and in 2009 the CCCBR agreed to invest £10,000 in a Ringing Foundation project known then as ITTS, which later became ART.

Now, fifteen years later, ART is fully established internationally and is working very well. It is self-financing and currently employs three part-time paid staff. ART has developed the Learning the Ropes scheme, with an attractive website aimed at new ringers and teachers, and published a complimentary and attractive suite of publications, with modern colour graphics, aimed at new ringers and their teachers. It is also working hard to launch a new on-line learning portal this autumn.

As part of their duties, ART’s paid admin staff triage learn-to-ring enquires that come through its website and forward them on to an active teacher who lives close by, whether this is an ART member or another known teacher, who is not an ART member. They are also able to survey and monitor the progress of these enquiries. Therefore, by CCCBR and ART working together, making the process more transparent and allowing non-ART members who meet a basic minimum standard (not necessarily those needed to become a full ART member) to be added to the wider list already operated by ART, it should not take very long for any new recruitment portal to become operational. This would be a win-win for both organisations.

Therefore, I hope that CCCBR is not proposing to increase affiliation fees in order to re-invent the wheel, and replicate what ART is already doing successfully. Surely there is a need to learn from all the discussions that have previously taken place and build on all the work that has been done by past and present CCCBR members over at least the last quarter of a century. The CCCBR shop still sells publications for teachers and learners that were written up to half a century before ART and Learning the Ropes. Perhaps now is the time to acknowledge that ART and Learning the Ropes are the mainstream, and finally move forward. This will then free up CCCBR to focus resources on those other things that can only be done centrally.

Simulators seem like a perfect fit for spending some of the cash mountains many BRFs are sitting on as they are an obvious "ringing infrastructure" item. — John de Overa

But we also need to invest some of that money in training people how to use them. So often I see people just using simulators as a form of sound control, rather than as a teaching tool like you are.

I also see people making the case for dumb bells in towers where it relatively easy to pop upstairs and silence a bell, so the dumb bell may just be there as a status symbol. However, spreading good teaching practice is what we should focus our resources on.

That's just the sort of evidence I think the CCCBR needs to justify having more financial muscle. — Paul Wotton

Another piece of evidence is that in 2007 the CCCBR established the Ringing Foundation. In 2009 it awarded the Ringing Foundation £10k to establish the Integrated Teacher Training Scheme (which subsequently became ART). Like two of the three servants, by 2015 the Ringing Foundation had levered in significant additional resources from a variety of other sources to enable it to fund the setting up of ART to the tune of £43k.

Today ART is not only financially self sufficient, arguably far more so than the CCCBR. It currently employs three part-time paid staff to assist its volunteers in delivering its activities. It also ploughs surplus money back into the grass roots through its awards scheme and it is also supporting university societies with grants to recruit new ringers at freshers fairs, and to train other students to teach them. In each of the last two years it has delivered over 50 one-day teacher training modules, attended by over 300 teachers each year, helping to grow the pool of teachers. There is a growing pool of ART Hubs promoting ringing and training new ringers, including the flagship ones at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich and St Clements in Cambridge. ART has also developed the Learning the Ropes scheme, with an attractive website aimed at new ringers, and published a complimentary and attractive suite of publications, with modern colour graphics, aimed at new ringers and their teachers, In all, a remarkable return on £10k.

If the CCCBR wishes to, it could build on its past investment and enable ART to do far more. Looking back to what was said in 2007, much of what was suggested then still applies today, and still needs addressing, and without ART things would be even worse now.