Ringing Forums

The death or demise of ringing is not the right peg on which to hang a recruiting story. Very few people want to join a failing organisation — Peter Sotheran

I agree, but round here it's not a popular view. The number of times I've been told 'what's the point if it doesn't get any recruits' to suggestions of spending money or effort on raising public awareness.
That partly motivated the series 'Us and then' that I wrote some years ago, the first of which was headed 'Begging bowl or welcome sign'. See: https://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/UsThem/index.html#Top

I'm not optimistic about ringing for the Coronation.
When we really pushed peal ringing in 2015 we got a big increase in first peals, but it was just a blip, not sustained.
Also, when we last had a 'recruit to ring every bell' event in 2000, the resultant influx was perceived to have lower aspirations and ability on average than the normal run of recruits, so not mostly budding peal ringers. And the focus on a single day led some recruits to feel they'd done their bit when it was over.
It would be nice to think this time will be different, but it's not clear what will make it so.

I extrapolated the chart of the decline in peal ringing and peal ringing finishes in 2050 — Simon Linford

How did you extrapolate? Linear extrapolation to zero is unlikely to be reliable, even if 'the same' conditions prevail.

That's not what I meant, I meant that GDPR compliance is often considered to be so scary it prevents people from doing things like setting up electronic membership systems, or email distribution lists. — John de Overa

I agreed with that main point in the first part of my comment, but I wanted to correct the misconception that everything has to have explicit (ie written) consent.

The basic principles are that the data has to be consented to, — John de Overa

That's certainly true. I suspect many of those who quote it haven't actually read what it says.

GDPR is often misunderstood and sometimes used as a reason for not doing things — John de Overa

That's not actually true. Consent is only one of the legitimate reasons for holding data, and not the first choice advised.

if all you know about a member is a name then you don't have a GDPR proble, because it only applies to personal data that you hold. If you don't have any you can't lose it and you can't get it wrong. If anyone did pop out of the woodwork and demand to know what info you had it would be an easy question to answer.

We have no list of such members, so our return for the Central Council is based on our alumni mailing list, which is only probably 1% of the possible total members. — Tristan Lockheart

That's a separate issue. The membership declaration to the CC is used to determine the contribution it should make, notably its affiliation fee. For societies with an annual subscription it is fairly clear cut, and obviously relates to ability to pay. For societies that don't have an annual fee that doesn't work so the membership is based on the number of 'active' members, typically the number who participate in one or more of the society's activities during the year. As well as being 'fair' that also avoids the problem of members the society has lost track of, because they aren't counted.

ODG used to have life members, where after a number of years you got free membership. Around ten years ago that was abolished, partly because with an aging demographic the number was expected to rise. At the same time the a Guild created a category of distinguished membership, awarded to a member who has been a Resident Ringing Member for at least 30 years and who has given mecritorious service to the Guild or a Branch. This init automatic, and has to be formally proposed, justified and approved.

I can't see any reason why it should be a GDPR nightmare.

a journalist's role is to write stories that will sell, not to act as free PR for ringers, and it's a sad fact that that bad news sells better than good news.
We need to be aware of this, and try not to provide any hooks on which to hang a bad news perspective. But since people will still come up with negative stories anyway so w need to be able to defuse them.
I once wrote a series of articles called 'A Reporter Called', each describing how a journalist turned up with a negative story, and how the ringer from whom he wanted extra details managed to turn the story round and send him (or her) away with a positive story. I was over ruled because it was considered unwise even to mention anything negative.

someone once told me that the difference between Devon call change ringers and the r st of us if that they often go and listen to other bands ringing. I don't know how true it is, but it was an interesting comment.

i wonder if you are expecting ringers to be users? Or perhaps you have already been asked to do so? — Alison Hodge

At the time I asked the parish was considering it and in particular the Groups part. The ringers were asked to have a look at it. I fed my thoughts back to the tower captain, saying that it seemed to be aimed at gropups closely involved with managing the church rather than semi independent 'service groups' like ringers, and that it felt Orwellian. I assume she passed on the comments but I don't know whether she filtered them.
This week's parish message says they have moved to a new admin system and asked recipients (ie parishioners not ringers) to fill in contact details - just that standard info they already have. I don't know whether they intend to use the groups features.

there are obviously several motivations that might lead to initial interest, some of which aren't likely to lead to long term commitment and success. But it's possible for the motivation that gets someone through the door in the first place to be changed by the subsequent experience, so the onus is on us to make sure that the early experience converts limited initial motivation into a more persistent motivation and long term commitment.
That won't always be possible, in which case it would be sensible to be open about it and provide exit opportunities that avoid wasting both tutor's and learner's time and loading the band with opportunity costs that are unlikely to pay off.

a donated bell belongs to the parish — J Martin Rushton

Legally in modern times it is owned by the PCC, but 'the parish' has a wider meaning of the local community. In the times when many of our bells were installed the ecclesiastical church was only responsible for the chancel. The rest of the church, including the tower and bells belonged to the community in a more real sense, and it's upkeep was down to the civic authority in a town or the Lord of the Manor in the country.
The idea that the only reason people ring is to call people to church is also modern. Until the Victorian clergy decided to take over ringing it was entirely separate from the church, and there was no service ringing - all public ringing was for civic events.
Bringing ringing more closely into the church had many benefits, to both the church and ringing. The clergy founded many of the ringing societies that are the infrastructure of modern ringing, and they promoted change ringing as a way to raise the tone of ringers. One result was the massive growth in peal ringing after around 1880.
But the downside is that civic ringing, and the connection between the civic community and ringers, has withered. That's a loss, but it's becoming more of a loss because as the Church declines, and church buildings close or find other uses, ringing will have to build new and stronger links with the community outside churches. Even if ringers start to pay realistic amounts for their hobby they will still be dependent on public goodwill to support major projects, and the live with public ringing.

I do think teaching of handling tends to stop far too soon — John de Overa

Yes. There is a tendency to consider it the first step, followed by different things, whereas in reality there is a continued need for caching in 'bell driving skills' alongside the progression to collective ringing with increasingly demanding manoeuvres, on a wide range of bells.
A more helpful term is 'bell control', of which 'handling' may be considered the initial step.

ART ... I thought it was a bit of a "closed shop" for high end method ringers only — J Martin Rushton

Wherever did you get that idea? It's an association of teachers, and it gets enough publicity to make its activities well known. Teaching starts at the beginning, and in practice ART expends more effort on the basics than on anything remotely resembling 'high end' ringing (unless by 'high end' you mean competent).

It's not a simple question of which is easier. They each have different things to go wrong. When lowering you are going 'downhill' but you are going from a slow stable rhythm with the balance point on hand if needed into a faster, less stable and mpre crowded rhythm. When raising you are going uphill but the further you go the more open (and familiar) the rhythm.
The seeds of a bad rise are sown with a bad start, failure to establish a stable two stroke rhythm early on. Typically the bells start too spaced out (and take too long to start) so there's an extended period with hand and backstrokes overlapping. Add in any unsteadiness and no one can hear whether they are right or wrong so different bells try to 'correct' in different directions. The whole thing is a mess until the bells are much higher and manage to sort themselves out.
This can be avoided if the Treble rises briskly to start with, which (a) gets quickly to a speed where the Tenor can strike and (b) pushes the other bells together leaving space for the second stroke to come in so everyone can hear what's happening. Once the Tenor is striking on both strokes, the Treble sticks to its tail and goes up at the Tenor's speed but before that it helps if the Treble mantally puts in the Tenor's backstroke so mthat when it emerges everything fits.
I just looked back to see what I said in 'Raising & Lowering in Peal' (is it really 35 years since I wrote it?) You might like to haqve a look. Feel free to copy anything you find useful.

I see there are some pretty extreme reactions to the original letter in this week's Ringing World.

supply and demand will have an effect, pushing up the cost of tuition in high demand activities. But that's only true within a limited range. Organisations don't reduce the cost to zero as soon as they don't have a waiting list.
In any case, it's better to create more demand than to give away what you have on the assumption that it's not worth paying for.

If we wanted to argue angels on pin heads then I could point out that the pen used to write it is not part of the body. However from a practical perspective I doubt writing the composition on one's hand would help. The difficult part of calling I find is remembering where you are in the composition while ringing.
But that misses the point. One of the key shifts from the old style Decisions to the current Framework was to recognise that while precision of description is a valid goal, some things - notably the attributes of performances that people value or are interested in - may differ between people or over time. The Framework's role is to enable concise, accurate description of performances, and the idea of a norm: 'something that might reasonably be assumed unless stated otherwise' was intended to cater for that variability without either over complicating most performance reports or outlawing things that didn't fit a rigid mould.
The definition of 'what would reasonably be assumed' is conveniently asymmetric, a bit like the concept of guilt in a court. If there is reasonable doubt then assume it won't.