Ringing Forums

we hold a tower Open Day and allow visitors to see the bells, clock and to take photos over the roof tops of the town from the tower roof. — Peter Sotheran

We have a similar situation with regards to access, and we do pretty much the same as you describe, usually a couple of times a year. We also do evenings for the Brownies & Scouts. The highlight for everyone who comes, regardless of age, is chiming a bell. We don't really regard it as a recruitment event, mostly it's for community engagement, although we have had new ringers as a result.

We need to get a strategy to improve peal ringing — Martyn Bristow

It's not just the decline in peal ringing we should be concerned about. There has been a general decline in the frequency of meetings and the interchange of ringers between neighbouring towers. — Peter Sotheran

You are absolutely right.

If the FA said its strategy for Football's survival was to depend on the offspring of Premier League players, the reaction would be incredulity and derision, yet apparently that's the strategy that the ringing illuminati think will work. Survival depends on grass roots ringing but, as has already been said, the gap between basic ringing and method ringing is already unsurmountable for many keen ringers. And that's irrespective of age - we have a 12 year old in our tower who shows promise, but there's nowhere he can realistically go for progress beyond the basics that we can offer him.

Every time this comes up I'm reminded of Ruth Eyles's Keeping People Ringing presentation at the ART conference 11 years ago. You can perhaps quibble with some of the details, but the principle of concentrating on growing the grass roots and then the elite levels will follow seems incontrovertible, yet it's fallen on deaf ears in the ringing community.

My conclusion is that we'll have to wait until the current upper echelons of ringing are gone and ringing has gone through a near-death experience before there's a realistic chance things can be turned around. But I don't expect I'll still be ringing when that point arrives. The problems have been known about and discussed ad nauseam for literally decades yet things have only continued to get worse. The incontrovertible inability of those running ringing to address the issues shows the continuing lack of realism, despite the starkness of the situation.

What percentage of these ringers would achieve anything beyond Plain Bob and Grandsire (basic change-ringing)? I don't think it would be any greater than it is now, partly because few ringers actually want to move on. Bell ringing is usually not the only thing they do, it isn't easy, and change-ringing is even more difficult! — Phillip George

You are absolutely right, you only have to look at the original "Room at the Top" series, published over 20 years ago, to realise that the learning curve has always been steep and the drop-off rate huge. But support for those who have the potential and the desire to progress is often non-existent. There's no point worrying about recruitment for method ringing if there's no path for the majority of people beyond PH/PB.

I've told our ringers that they've got to work harder in their ringing, visit other towers, go to meetings, get experience, talk about ringing to others and help get recruits. However enthusiastic I am counts for nothing if others don't step up to the mark. — Phillip George

Again you are right, but I think that's a cultural issue. It's a big step for many adult learners to put themselves back into "learner" mode just in one tower, expecting them to do that in multiple towers is an even bigger ask. But it can be done, one guild I ring in has a "cluster" approach and it's the norm for people to ring in more than one tower from the start, because the existing ringers are mobile so there's nothing unremarkable in doing so.

the majority have ringing parents - about 80%. Having ringing parents is a huge advantage. — Simon Linford

Interesting, I guess that's not a new phenomenon in terms of those who make up elite ringing? But it's also going to be affected by ringing's demographic issues, albeit with a one generation delay.

The use of simulators for extending the ringing repertoire is not perfect, nothing is quite the same as ringing with ‘real’ ringers

No, it certainly isn't, but if it's the only option you have... However with good access to one and an understanding of how best to use it you can make much quicker progress. For example after being more or less told by one ASCY grump that I'd never be able to ring on 8, two weeks later I rang my first Major (Cambridge) at a branch practice - well, I did have a point to prove, and a tower key...

If we tried cast of 1000 with a full day of ringing every second month and ‘homework’ to be done with simulator / Abel / pen and paper in between it could be more productive than relying on regular practice sessions.

I've love if there was something like that available, and happily travel quite a distance to attend. But I don't think every 2 months is often enough. I go to Whiting Society full day events, but they don't frequently enough to be really useful - for example I learned Bristol on the simulator and rang it successfully at a practice earlier this year, but that's the only chance I've had. And If there's no opportunity to ring the stuff locally, I do wonder how much point there is? I'm hacking away at Cambridge/Yorkshire/Superlative/Bristol on the sim for my own amusement, but there's little chance of me ringing them for real, and as you correctly say, transferring from a sim to real ringers does need additional practice.

The part about accepting people who won’t go further and how to manage that is definitely a tough one

Sure is, but it's not a new problem. It's always going to be a balancing act, but I think both new and established ringers are aware of the challenges and providing there is balance, are prepared to adapt.

some of those ringers find they can’t progress any further at their tower and don’t feel supported by the Branch or District to keep them progressing and another proposed reason, which could also be true for some, is that bands become overwhelmed by learners who all need to practice endless plain hunt (for example) and some of the more experienced ringers lose interest or the tower stops recruiting while getting this batch of learners to a standard.

I've seen exactly that happen. I also know one tower that took on (I think) 15 for RFTK, 6 months later they had just 1 left. Our strategy has been to take on only a couple of learners at a time, but to get them fully integrated into the band as quickly as possible and to push them forward as quickly as they are comfortable with, then repeat the process, even if that means asking people to wait. For example, we've "adopted" a ringer from elsewhere who is mad keen but wasn't getting the help she needed at her closest tower. She's been ringing for 3 months, is starting Plain Hunt and is coming on our tower outing in a few weeks (and no, she isn't a "youth"). It's a strategy that so far seems to be working well for us.

This does suggest that methods which allow for more solo learning and practice, mixed with very targeted opportunities with the investment of support from experienced ringers, will become more and more important

Absolutely agree. Not only do I practice on the simulator a couple of hours a week, I also run weekly sessions for two of our ringers who are on the cusp of method ringing. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, not just for them personally but also for the whole band, as they now have the skills and just as important the confidence needed to provide a solid band around our earlier stage ringers.

I agree with your analysis of the current situation. However I do have quibbles with some of your conclusions.

If we get 10,000 new ringers into the Blue Zone, particularly if they don't learn at university or younger, the reality is that they will not enter the Red Zone - they won't get over that hurdle of ringing methods that aren't Plain Bob and Grandsire

If all they get taught is PB & GS then it's not exactly surprising if that's all they achieve. I ring at one small and mostly unknown guild's very well attended monthly 6-bell practice and although there is some PB & GS, the majority is TB & Surprise, and there's a "Method of the month". It's all ringers "of a certain age", all keen to progress who are being supported in doing so. Are they ever going to get to the heady heights of BMax? Unlikely, but that shouldn't mean they are sidelined - these people are the seed bed for the upper reaches.

We acknowledge that we can create competent Bob Minor ringers, but continuing a training programme beyond that is hard.

Yes, it is but I don't think that justifies not trying. My historically-call-changes-only home tower is unlikely to churn out PB ringers, mostly because that's not what we are asking people to learn. They are more likely to ring something like Double Oxford first. None of them can do so yet, but they all successfully rang the frontwork within 10 mins of first trying, and without looking at the blue line. That was a deliberate decision - the point of it was to show them that DblOx was a realistic thing to aim for, and we are now working on the other skills they need, for example simulator sessions to sharpen up bell control and ringing by place, which they are tackling with enthusiasm. Will that be successful? I don't know, but I think a new approach is badly needed, even if it isn't ours.

Endless clanking away at PB is an exercise in demotivation, like much of ringing teaching it's no longer not for purpose. I'd love to see is a thought-through and detailed pathway from PH to Surprise, having been through the ART process myself, it's "Now go learn methods" at L4/5 just doesn't cut it. The 95% drop-off rate between L1 & 5 is no surprise to me, I gave up on ART after L4. Getting people to L3/4 is a big investment, not fully capitalising on it is a waste of resources that I don’t think ringing can afford.

There will be a fast track through for people who learn young, and a small number of cities plus the SRCY and ASCY will support them.

I understand why something like ARA is attractive for people who have been grinding away at the problem for years with little support let alone thanks and I don't disagree with fast tracking talent, but I don't know of any similar activity to ringing that's survived by concentrating only on the elite. My conviction is that a plan that's based purely on elite ringing is doomed to fail.

There's also tremendous selection bias going on here - the ringers who are picked up by programmes such as ARA have already been subject to a heavy pruning process. ARA isn't dealing with all the youngsters who turn up and don't make it that far, and they are the majority. And without a viable community at the lower levels, who is going to give the young talent the basic training and a regular band to ring with that they need? If there's no pipeline, there's going to be no pool for ARA to draw from.

Is there anything we can do about that?

Yes, lots that can be done. But that's going to need people at the top engaging and listening to people at the bottom, and I'm afraid that's not one of the ringing community's strengths. To be direct, there's far too much "We didn't learn that way" and "We know best". Well, clearly not, because if that was the case, ringing wouldn't be in crisis. Personally I have little appetite left for engagement, other that grumping on this rather moribund forum, I've been "put in my place" far too often to want to bother any more. I'll continue to work on my own ringing and helping my own band because I think I can make a difference there. But ringing in general? Hah!

Does it matter if there isn't?

Yes, immensely. Because without it, ringing is dead.

It’s not going to be the Central Council that turns things round, it’s going to be the many ringers at grass roots level that will need to do the hard work. The Central Council can provide the central support, but that will only work if the people on the ground take it up. — Roger Booth

I agree. But much of the information that comes out from the CC either never gets to the grass roots or seems to be aimed at elite ringing and is therefore irrelevant to them. PR is pointless unless it targets the right audience and is backed up by resources, which I believe should be potential recruits / early stage ringers.

There is an issue at the moment that many of the experienced ringers ring surprise, but there’s a squeezed middle between plain hunt and surprise, which many people who wish to progress find difficult to cross. In the past there were fewer surprise ringers and there were more opportunities to ring intermediate methods to facilitate progression. — Roger Booth

Exactly. Surprise ringers can ring intermediate methods, the problem is that many of them only want to ring with other Surprise ringers and that's in a rapidly shrinking pool, as you pointed out. Of course people are free to ring with whoever they wish but the results are entirely predictable - I do get a little irked hearing some Surprise ringers bitching about how there are few opportunities to ring at that level nowadays when they've sat on their hands for the last couple of decades and watch it happen.

Not only does the current situation make it difficult / impossible for those who are bloody-minded enough enough to want to keep progressing, it's an insurmountable barrier for those who are capable of making the transition but don't feel motivated enough to put up the necessary fight, which reduces the pool of potential "improvers" even further.

Feedback from those that responded to a questionnaire sent to Ring for King learners was that many of the experienced ringers seemed to prefer to ring with each other, rather than new ringers. However, whilst it is the experienced ringers who hold office at tower, district/branch and guild/association level, it is these new ringers that are the future of ringing. — Roger Booth

That's only going to happen if they feel valued and enfranchised. The view from the trench I'm sat in is that the CCCBR is run for elite ringing, by elite ringers. And many associations are effectively moribund, so salvation is not going to come from that quarter either.

I though the Cast of 1000 idea was a good one, but it didn't appear to make the transition from virtual to real practices and seems to have died a death? The other issue was that it assumed the problem was at the Surprise Major level whereas it's now at least as prevalent at the PB/PH level. My own tower has exactly that challenge at the moment, we are struggling to move on from simple Minimus methods to Minor but we don't have enough people at the right level to do so. We are working on it but there are many other towers in the same situation.

Therefore, perhaps the most important thing that the new PR Workgroup could do is to find ways of reaching grass roots ringers, especially the new ones that have taken up ringing since Covid. In my experience they are often very keen, have useful skills, and would like to help turn things round. Otherwise they will just give up in frustration and put their energies elsewhere! — Roger Booth

Yes, they will, and there's a short window in which to engage them. And if they can't keep making progress, they'll quickly get fed up and put their energies elsewhere anyway.

There are also issues in following up enquiries as so many towers these days so not have active bands. — Roger Booth

Or if they do, the opportunities for progress top out at PH / PB5. That's my concern about the current CCCBR strategy - it seems to be very front-weighted, with far less attention being paid to the much harder problem, making sure the people we attract get good quality training and a satisfying experience. If we can't retain people and get the very best out of them, what's the point?

Yes, and a lot of the current resource with time and skill will have reached the end of its shelf life within the next 5 to 10 years! — Phillip George

We already have a national scheme for teaching ringing teachers, the challenge seems to be to get enough people to do it. In my case, the branch ringing master who taught me got me to help with earlier stage learners as I progressed, thought I had aptitude for it and encouraged me to do the ART course. In addition, my home tower was on its last legs at the time, with only a few elderly ringers, so there was nobody else to teach. I still feel like a bit of an impostor as I'm still learning myself, but I've taught half of our current ringers, so we've gone from a tower that was dying to one that's growing with only a modest amount of outside help.

I rarely tell people outside my own tower that I teach people to start ringing, as in many other contexts I'm the learner, and I can't be bothered justifying why I'm teaching others. I think there needs to be more acceptance that teaching ringing isn't a single thing, and that teaching the basics doesn't require the teacher to be a black zone ringer. I think you are right about the increasing scarcity of people who can teach at an advanced level, putting the additional burden of teaching the basics on them doesn't seem like a good use of their time.

Personally I think the teacher should be paid, but that then opens a hornets nest of insurance, tax, minimum wwage, employee (and not volunteer) status etc. — Nick Elks

We already get paid for weddings, I don't expect the amounts for teaching would be vastly different.

We charged £15 for our "Taster" session, that money went into the tower fund anyway. The point of the charge wasn't to raise money, it was to establish a minimum level of commitment from the attendees.

agreed that the training needs to be good quality, but taking a course to get started in something is common, I don't believe people signing up for ringing courses would expect ringing to be any different. Ringing courses such as the NW one (and others) provide training across a reasonably wide range of skill levels and don't seem to have a problem setting expectations.

Perhaps we need to emphasise this point when ‘signing up’ recruits, and that they have an option to either verbally commit to accepting that there will be an expectation to ‘pay back’ for all the time provided by others to their development — Bob Blanden

We now make it very clear from the start that we expect a commitment to turn up regularly at practices and Sunday mornings. We've turned away one couple who wouldn't do that. In fact it appeared they expected us to adjust practices to suit them.

You sometimes see a ‘flapping board’ fitted to a frame where an outward flying rope could hit another wheel or a bearing housing. We have one. — John Harrison

So do we. The gap between the wall and the wheel on our 7 is less than the diameter of the rope. After it was roped from the other side during the rehang, the rope jumped far enough of the wheel to get jammed between the wall and wheel and stop the bell dead. A board solved that.

Btw i sent John an email a couple of weeks ago asking about progress since I rang his simulator a year ago but not heard so far. — John Harrison

Last time I talked to him he was still working on finishing the full set off, he said he was uprating the back 2 of the 10 to bigger motors. I'll be seeing him and/or Linda in a few weeks, I'll get an update :-)

I wrote something on the subject a few years ago that people might find interesting https://dingdong887180022.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/should-we-charge-for-bell-ringing-lessons/ Things are rarely clear cut. — Mary Jones

Indeed they aren't and there's one very important factor that's completely absent from that article. People are happy to pay for courses because there's a perceived value in them. If something is free, there's a serious risk it won't be valued. We have a promising young ringer who has been completely surpassed by the adults who started at the same time as him, despite the widespread belief that kids always do better than adults. Why? Simple. He doesn't pay for ringing lessons, so if there's a conflict between ringing and an activity that mum & dad have to pay for, guess which one takes priority? As a result we see him only infrequently, and when we do, we spend a lot of time going back over things he's already done.

the speed varies a lot, from zero to quite fast in under half a second, — John Harrison

An interesting aside: I was talking to a friend who has built an incredibly accurate simulator which models the physics of the bell/wheel/rope system, you can even "bounce" off the nonexistent stay, or ring as if you were on the moon (i.e. very slowly!). He told me that during his modelling work he found out why some ropes can "jump wheel". It's because wheel is moving faster than gravity can accelerate the rope downwards, so if the ringer doesn't keep tension on the rope it will "float" off the rim.

Whether charging learners or not it is important that those teaching ringing are 'qualified to do so' in that they have Church of England Safeguarding training (which can be done on-line for free) and of course have a current DBS certificate. — Jane Pridmore

Safeguarding is about protecting those who are vulnerable, only a minority are. Whilst having SG training / DBS is good practice, enthusiastic over-application of "Safeguarding" to situations irrespective of it's appropriate or not is one of the current blights on ringing.

If I charge for ringing teaching and the person doesn't like it or want to continue will I be giving them their money back?' — Jane Pridmore

If you asked a decorator to paint a room and then decided you didn't like the colour you'd chosen, would you expect the decorator to refund what you'd paid them? No, I thought not.

The biggest problem I've seen with ringing training is that some people believe that because they are accomplished ringers themselves, they automatically have the skills to teach others. Yes, many can but there are lots of towers where the TC is teaching people to ring "Because they are the TC" when they are completely unfit to do so.

We are holding a "So you want to learn to ring?" taster session next week, the cost is £15 but if people want to take it up we probably won't to charge them for lessons, The intent of the charge was to filter out those who just want to have a go pulling a bell rope - we already provide that "experience" during our tower open days.

I'm not personally opposed to charging though, we have one young promising learner who's attendance is only intermittent, if there was a monthly up-front charge I'm sure we'd see him more often.

Many ringers who ring by following ropes don’t consciously change speed, they merely make a number of enforced steps, the aggregate effect of which is an approximate speed change, but one that is always a bit behind the curve, and fails as soon as they fail to see the next rope to follow. That might be what happens at the back. — John Harrison

When I started ringing the band struggled to get past back rounds in Plain Hunt. The reason was that the ringers with the worst bell control would only ring the front bells, and they could only ring at two speeds, slow and slower. The rest of the band were completely dependent on bell numbers, so once the front bells got to the back they just festered there with the rest of the band desperately trying to hold up over them. The concepts of in, rounds & out speeds, let alone "at the front" or "at the back" were all a mystery. It can be difficult for experienced ringers to fully appreciate the almost complete lack of situational awareness that afflicts some ringers, they can only ring by bell number and then only if all the bells they are over are in the right place.

Saying the name of a place doesn’t help them to know where it is and how far from it their bell is, nor the action they need to get it their. The counting goes on in one part of their brain, separate from the rest which carries on doing the same unsuccessful actions as before. — John Harrison

This is very true. I can think of the case of one ringer who would insist they were counting places and were therefore in the right place when there was a fire-up. What they were actually doing was counting pulls, pulls that were divorced from the speed the rest of the band were ringing at.

I think a large part of these problems are due to the way ringing is taught, with insufficient emphasis on rhythm and listening. That creates dependence on other people being in the right place visually, whereas what's really needed are the skills to be in the right place in time, independent of others.

A simulator exercise I use is to get people to ring with the moving ringers and highlight ringer turned on, and when they have rung a couple of steady leads, I turn the screen off and tell them to keep going. I don't tell them in advance because they invariably say they won't be able to do it, whereas they almost invariably can. The goal is to show them that they *do* have rhythm and listening skills, but they are being swamped by the emphasis on vision that dominates ringing teaching. A large part of being able to ring by rhythm is having the confidence to actually try it.

We have had many discussions about ringing by vision versus listening/rhythm in our tower. Some of us can see the order of the bells all the time, I can't do that but I can ring Surprise Major on the simulator just by ear. I can't comprehend how they can see all the bells, they can't comprehend how I can ring without seeing them at all. I suspect the top-flight ringers can do both, the rest of us have to do the best we can by emphasising our natural strengths and working on our weaknesses. One of our learners is very sound-dominated and always been able to pick out their bell and could cover well from the start by "Just being the last bong". Another learner will "accurately" clash away forever, because they are ringing just by vision and can't hear their bell. We've adapted out teaching specifically to them, some teaching I've seen seems to be adapted to the proclivities of the teacher rather than she student.

But the common thing they all need to get sorted first is bell control, without that they don't have the skills to get the bell in the right place, even when they know it's not.

Ultimately many ringers fall somewhere in between, motivated to ring well and sometimes try new things but often looking at ringing as a stress reducing (and sometimes primarily social) hobby. — Lucy Chandhial

I originally read that as "stress inducing" :lol:

All good advice. I think the other thing to remember is that if you are motivated enough to take on the responsibility of TC, teaching, helping people progress etc, you are probably at the upper end in terms of motivation and ability. The majority will therefore be less motivated / able than you are, which doesn't mean they aren't interested in progression, just that it's less of a priority for them. And from observing the people I ring with, motivation is not a fixed thing - people can progress fairly quickly and then appear to plateau. That can be for a number of reasons - wanting to just enjoy where they are at, wanting to consolidate skills, or other things happening in their lives. But a few months later they may be champing at the bit again, and wanting to drive forwards. You just have to accept and adapt to that.

well, some of the practices I've been to have been a right performance :razz:

The public won't necessarily know which are practices and which are performances, but despite what many ringers tell themselves, the public absolutely can tell the difference between good and bad ringing.