Ringing Forums

Possible actions could also include giving larger grants, or widening the scope of work that the BRF will fund — Roger Booth

Yes to everything on your list. Sound Control funding seems to be uncontentious, but I don't know how simulators and CCTV for the bells are viewed by BRFs. We have both (installed during the rehang) and they are used regularly. We also have three roller displays about the church, the bells and ringing in general. We also hired a mobile belfry for the local carnival during the rehang. The funding for all those "add ons" came from the HLF rather than the Association, it seems ironic that it's easier to get funding for that sort of thing from external funding bodies than it is from our own sources.

in the current climate that is something to work through rather than a reason not to try. — John Harrison

Absolutely so. But I think it needs to be supported by a fully thought-out plan for how the reallocated money is going to be put to best use. @Roger Booth pointed on FB to what The Essex Association are doing in this area, it's an interesting read.

That doesn't follow. — John Harrison

You'd first have to persuade the majority of the members of the association that it was a good idea, get them to formally approve it, deal with the thorny issues of donations and bequests that were given specifically for bell restoration, rewrite the governing document of the BRF, get that approved by the membership, then after that you'd have to approach the Charity Commission to ask them to approve the change.

As I said, "That it will likely be difficult and time consuming".

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. — Roger Booth

That would require the agreement of both the association membership and The Charity Commission:

You must ask for Commission authority if your amendment will:
* change your charity’s purposes

That it will likely be difficult and time consuming. I think @Lucy Chandhial's suggestion of diverting funding from the BRF into a training fund would be easier.

Modern engineering is such that in 50 - 100 years only a minor overhaul will be needed, which will be far less expensive. — Roger Booth

Our installation is 100 years old and it cost ~£60K for the rehang - the wheels needed rebuilding, the steel and wooden frames need strengthening, a new ceiling/floor etc etc etc - refurbishment is always going to be an expensive business.

How do we want to recruit and teach bellringing in order to reach more people more quickly? — Lucy Chandhial

Recruitment gets most of the attention but it's pretty pointless without a solid, countrywide pipeline for people to progress along, and that's sorely lacking in many areas. That training needs to go well beyond PH/PB, which is about the outer limits of most people who start via ART. Relatively speaking, "fixing" recruitment is easy - indeed my tower has stopped at the moment because we don't have sufficient capacity to deliver decent training to new starters. Adequate training at the Surprise / 8 bell level is rare at best - once-a-year courses don't cut the mustard and I'm just about to stop going to the nearest fortnightly (!) Surprise Major practices which are almost entirely focused on extending the repertoire of long-term already-advanced-level ringers, I can't justify 90 mins of travelling for two half courses of Cambridge, which is all I'm "allowed" to ring by the person running the practice. Fair enough if he wants to ring Spliced DooDah with his friends, but it isn't an adequate learning environment for anyone trying to get to that level.

I completely agree that training and not bells is the biggest need, but as most BRFs are charities with a specific purpose of funding bell repairs, wouldn't reallocating funds to training require a change to a BRF's governance?

As for the cash mountain, I get the impression that some BRFs have fairly low limits on what proportion of a project they'll fund, perhaps they could be encouraged to be more generous?

I'd love it if there was something like that round here, well done!

I lived in fear for a long time because when it happened to me someone rushed over in what appeared to be a panic to grab the rope. — Judith Dennis

It's difficult to simulate losing control, you can't really recreate the "startle factor" when it happens for real. I illustrate that you can miss the sally, just ring backstrokes and still have control of the bell. We also go through the drill which is:

• If you miss the sally, don't make a second attempt to grab it, it's most likely already going up to the ceiling and if you grab hold, so are you.
• Keep hold of the tail end with both hands.
• Go up the rope a bit, step back if you need to and go into "ringing up" mode, something they practice from the first lesson.

The other key thing is for the teacher not to panic themselves, seeing them dashing across the room, madly grabbing at the rope and ending up half way up to the ceiling themselves is the opposite of confidence giving - I saw exactly that last week. For me, taking the rope off the learner is a last resort, not the first response to a fluffed stroke.

Therefore something as complex as ringing, without a lot of repetition, is difficult. The situation with the availability of rope time with good ringers in my opinion is the chief problem for beginners, but not a criticism. — Judith Dennis

Sufficient, appropriate rope time is a problem no matter what level you are at. My experience is that rope time is the biggest single factor in people's progress, far more so than age, for example.

exactly. I wouldn't necessarily be prompting them to do it, but if they were clearly hesitant and wanted to, fine. It's not uncommon for experienced ringers to have a couple of practice pulls to determine if they need a box or not, if that isn't a problem, this shouldn't be either.

If you want to instil confidence in beginners, I think one of the best ways is to teach them how to safely self-recover if they miss the sally, which at some point they will.

Another thing I find from teachers/tower captains is the habit of allowing a ringer to try the bell. Answer - No! — Phillip George

Sorry, I think that's a very unhelpful approach and shows a lack of understanding of just how nerve racking it can be for a learner to ring in an unfamiliar tower and/or with unfamiliar ringers. It doesn't matter how confident the teacher is, because it's not about them, it's about the learner. If a teacher can't appreciate the difference in between ringing on your own and ringing in rounds, I have to wonder if they should be teaching at all. A quick go takes less than a minute and as the person who'd have to end up fixing the stay, I'd much prefer than nervous learners had a try on their own. There's too much macho bulls**t in ringing as it is, this sort of mindset really needs to be consigned to the past.

Speaking of feedback, as you get on it tends to get both less frequent and sometimes more negative. I think that may be because more experienced ringers feel it isn't any longer their place to give it unless you've really stuffed something up. I still find feedback very useful and welcome it, when you are out of your comfort zone it's easy to miss issues that you'd normally pick up yourself.

When you start ringing longer touches, feedback is most helpful during the touch when you can immediately do something about it. And positive feedback is important as well, not for ego massaging but so you can focus on when you've made an improvement and keep doing it like that.

I like the scree analogy, it sounds familiar :grin:

I realise this is a biased sample but that's really the point - those people have a lot to offer, not just in their direct interactions with pupils but also in helping others do the same.

I think you are both right. Of course some people get to a level and don't want to progress any further, but I don't think anyone starts with a goal of being distinctly mediocre.

Obviously there's a point in people's progress where they need to do the equivalent of moving from college to university and take primary responsibility for their progress. The challenge is supporting that - in many cases the ringing equivalent is a bit like pointing them at the university library and telling them to come back in three years for an exam. And if that's coupled with John's point about lack of groundwork, it's no wonder so many people get stuck between PH and "proper" methods.

I spent a half an hour yesterday quizzing a very experienced ringer about his "mental model", rather than the mechanics. It was invaluable - some things I'd already figured out myself and it was good to hear I wasn't too far off the mark, other things I hadn't thought of but clicked as soon as he said them. To go back to the university analogy, it was like attending a tutorial. I know the importance of the pub to ringing is often joked about, it can fill the same role but it's very hit and miss.

One thing that stood out in particular is he said that introspection was key to sustained progress. That comes across very strongly from the people who post here - it seems to me that they spend at least as much time thinking about ringing as they spend doing it. I think imbuing learners with that mindset from the start is important.

I have the full set and Linda was waving the RW at me about an hour ago, although I didn't have a chance to read the review as we were all about to leave for the next tower :smile:

I am fortunate to be retired. Therefore I have time to give extra practises to my ringers. — Phillip George

I'm not so fortunate but I still run weekly tied bell + simulator practices. The difference it has made is significant. I think if you are serious about bringing people on, extra practices are vital. Nobody is going to learn to dodge properly with the standard 2 attempts at 2 leads of PBD a week.

Some might say it’s the district ringing masters role to keep an eye on the overall quality of practices but it’s probably not realistic to expect them to be able to support improvement in all towers that need it. — Lucy Chandhial

Most district have 10s of towers, I don't think this is realistic. If RMs pre-emptively step in to fix poor practices it's sure to cause conflict, even though it's those towers that need help the most.

Surely teachers need to find out why their learners are failing and try to work out how to help them? — Sue Marsden

no attempt is made to find out WHAT they are finding difficult or WHY they are going wrong. — Sue Marsden

Other times they have not been told HOW to learn a method or even told to learn anything at all - just told to catch hold and are 'talked through' bob minor without any explanation. — Sue Marsden

All of those are issues in my experience, for a whole number of reasons:

• It's easy for a teacher to see handling problems but they can't see what's going on inside the learner's head.
• Beyond the handling stage, learning theory is necessary. Many learner's won't.
• Beyond the handling stage, doing homework is mandatory. Many learner's don't.
• Teachers "help" by "encouraging" learners (often loudly) to use skills they don't actually have, like dodging.
• Many teachers learned so long ago they can't remember how they learned a skill and can't therefore teach people it. Ropesight being a particular case.
• Other ringers get understandably snitty if a practice stalls whilst someone gets a theory lesson. See "Homework" above.
• A lot of TCs aren't much further on in the book than the rest of the band and don't have the skills to teach.
• Some TCs are very status-oriented and won't learn themselves or take outside advice, even if that ends up killing the band.
• Learners are taught to ring by bell number, or do it anyway and that quickly becomes a lifelong, incurable, debilitating addiction. "Circle of Work" isn't much better.

That's just an immediate list off the top of my head, I'm sure there are lots more. Teaching of Method Ringing (as opposed to bell handling) is generally dire, to the point where I think a reasonable approximation is that it isn't taught at all. People who learn to ring methods competently generally do so despite the "teaching" they receive, not because of it.

None of this is new, neither are the solutions. But here we still are.

I find it hard to see how anyone who is not a competent method ringer, at least of basic methods, can hope to teach method ringing — John Harrison

As a ringer in a tower that's trying to move into method ringing I agree with that. Even with three of us who can ring inside, it's still a challenge to "get things going". But we are making steady progress.

that assumes the teacher is learning somewhere else to stay ahead — John Harrison

That's exactly my concern, that seems to be mostly down to geography and chance at the moment, and I think it shouldn't be.

Anyone teaching wobbly plain hunt by the numbers is in the wrong book for teaching competent method ringing. — John Harrison

Yes, that's a given.

Good for you and I hope you are successful, but just the one of you doesn't really scale :wink:

With the encouragement of my own teacher I went on the ART teacher's course, although I probably wouldn't have been considered "suitable" by some. But I've continued to work hard on my own ringing and I'm a much better ringer than I was when I started teaching. My concern is that the current recovery model seems to be very top-down. If we are to revitalise ringing then the whole community needs to be moving, not just the elite level, not just one particular age group and not just a small number of towers.

That's fine in theory but is unachievable in the many towers where there are no competent method ringers to start with and the standard is at best wobbly PH by-the-numbers. What do they do? That's why I said there needs to be ongoing support for the people who are motivated enough to want to learn to teach. If we want to raise standards across the board it's not feasible to parachute skilled method ringers into every tower, we need to find a way of supporting the people teaching in such towers so they can stay a few pages further on in the book, which means ongoing and tiered support. That's going to be a better use of increasingly scarce resources.

I've personally seen several occurrences of people being sniffy about ART teachers, so it does happen. I'm sure it's justified in some cases but they were blanket statements coming from what would be considered advanced ringers. And I've watched some of those same ringers teaching people and their approach leaves a lot to be desired. I don't think any of that will apply to anyone who contributes here, but it does happen.

The would-be ringers are limited by the abilities of those in charge of the tower or responsible for their introduction to ringing — Peter Sotheran

I'm not disagreeing with your list, although fortunately it's not been my experience of learning to ring. But it does describe the situation at my home tower until recently, for around 40 years - when he comes to practices one of the semi-retired ringers often wistfully says "I wish we knew about all this stuff years ago". so this isn't a new problem, it's more that it's become more acute.

As I understand it, ART was set up to address exactly these problems, but some associations only have 5-10 teachers, so there's still more to do. I think part of that requires that the wider ringing community accepts that you don't need to be a Spliced Surprise Major peal ringer to teach people Pain Hunt. What would also help is if there was tutoring and support for the grass roots ART teachers that continued after they had received their accreditation.

Agreed also. But it's going to take time for the pipeline to refill. While that's happening we need to keep towers alive and ringing at a reasonable standard wherever possible, so there are opportunities and support for those people who are the long term future.

It's not necessary for teenagers to be Surprise Major ringers when they go to Uni (although great if they are), but making sure they don't need "remedial help" when they do seems sensible and achievable. You don't need to be a Premier League manager to run an after school footy club, you need to be able to safely teach basic skills, identify talent and know when it's the right time to pass them on for more advanced teaching. That's the way things work in other similar pursuits, I don't understand why ringing should be any different.

When the ship's sinking I think it's sensible to welcome anyone who wants to bail, be it with a bucket or a teacup.