Ringing Forums

Being central is compounded by being one layer removed. Starting from scratch we would have a (inter)national body, with a regional structure of suitable granularity to operate locally. That would enable it to 'do' things through its local structure, which would be its visible face. But for historical reasons we don't have that. The Council is loose federation of independent societies, so what it can 'do' is limited, and so is its visibility.
If you read the Council's history that wasn't the original intention. The plan was for a national ringing society but its proponents (a committee) didn't promote the idea very well. They assumed it would be a pushover but the existing ringing societies were against it. The resultant weak structure was Haywood's compromise to get them onside.
One of CRAG's recommendations was to consider converting the Council to a direct member organisation. Despite the merits of the end state, the difficulty is making the transition from the status quo. When the old Admin Committee considered it in 2014 it got kicked into the long grass. More recently the Executive considered it (as the Council's rules require it to do every few years) but decided it was currantly too difficult to do it in a way that would command enough support.
Advocates of direct membership will criticise the Executive for being too timid, but if its assessment is correct then it's a criticism of the ringing community clinging to its Victorian structures.
Returning to the original topic, direct membership properly implemented would almost certainly feel more democratic the the grass roots member.

Jane Wilkinson .... the Council is seen as increasingly undemocratic.” — Simon Linford

I have heard that sentiment several times in recint years, in Council meetings, from opponents of the reforms the reforms that the Council has now overwhelmingly accepted.
Outside the Council the complaints I have heard are about being effective or useful, not about being democratic.
Democracy matters with an organisation that has power, to make laws or whatever. But the Council has negligible power. It can only achieve results by persuasion or example.
It's old structure was slow, cumbersome and erred on the side of not making decisions. Ive seen a lot of good ideas kicked into the long grass during my time on the Council.
In contrast, the new structure gives the Executive a remit to get on and do things, and to report on what it is doing so the representative members can hold it to account. If we don't like what the Execitive does then it's our job to hold it to say so, and in extremist to call in its decisions.
So far, the new system is working better than the old. There's some way to go though, so no cause for complacency.

I didn't say anything about learning only with a simulator. That's not sensible unless you don't have any real ringers to ring with. But I don't think it sensible to inflict the complexity if real ringers on someone, with the confusion of ropesight and the need to ride through other people's inaccuracies, until they have developed the ability to ring rhythmically, fitting in with an external beat. That's why they learn to control a bell with a simulator between learning to handle a bell safely and coping with live ringers. It has other benefits. They know they can hear their bell rather than it being an aspiration for later. The know they can place the next blow by rhythm, so no need to panic if they can't see who's in front of them. And above all they can get nearly an hour of quality rope time for an hour of their time and one other, rather than getting a much shorter amount of less quality time with a much bigger need for supporting effort.
But of course they need a lot of ringing with (and standing behind) other ringers as well as time with a simulator.

not modelling wheel sizes for the moving ringers. An experienced ringer actually picked up on that when I gave him his first go on the simulator — John de Overa

Anyone I teach first rings with the simulator long before trying to cope with lots of moving ropes, real let alone simulated.

he true rhythm of plain hunting with an open hand stoke lead, — Nigel Goodship

This is described on p89 of The New Ringer's Book with diagrams showing the true path when hunting uo and down.

yes , in round figures for six bells the ratios are 5/6, 6/6 and 7/6. Pedantically you would start with your 'normal' speed (in our case around 2h50m, but 3h is near enough to demonstrate the difference.

The first time I did this with someone who was already PH-ing with the band, they were all over the place and they were astonished at how big the speed changes were supposed to be — John de Overa

Some ringers aren't even told they are supposed to change speed, just told to think in terms of places and/or bells to follow. That puts them at a huge disadvantage.
I have always introduced learners to different speeds before they hunt but I now do that in a way that gives them more practice and feedback. I get them to ring rounds at 2 1/2 him and 3 1/2 hour peal speeds as well as 3 hours, which correspond to hunting down hunting up and rounds.
I ask them to ring 'fast' or 'slow', and if necessary adjust the speed towards the target value. Then let them ring for several minutes at that speed, with prompts or comments as required, and then discuss what hey did, what it felt like, and how to overcome any problems.

sport doesn't imply competition. A lot of sports are not. Read the official definition and you will see it is a good fit for ringing.

can't it be both? Ringing has many facets, and shares features with both sports and musical performance.
I think ringing would be better if more ringers considered themselves performers, but the match is far from perfect. For example it's quite hard to map ringing onto the assessment structure used for conventional musical instruments.
If you are interested see: https://jaharrison.me.uk/Ringing/Music/

few years ago there was a concerted effort made to have ringing recognised as a sport in order to try to access grants from Sport England (or some such). The clear answer was a firm 'no'; ringing was not defined as a sport. — Peter Sotheran

That's an over simplification. The biggest objection came from within the CC from those who didn't want to scare the horses (the CofE) by suggesting ringing was anything other than a call to worship. (And if the story ever gets written that related to CC reform like the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand did to WW1)
If you read the official European definition of a sport (which Port England uses) you will see that ringing ticks virtually every box. We would have needed an anti doping policy, but that's not hard (I wrote a draft version).
The biggest problem was internal, as it is when trying to doing anything different in ringing. Ringers argue with each other and leaders give up in preference to upsetting anyone.

I've rung at towers where the Treble rope had a different coloured Sally.

istr we were told 25 years, but. I can't remember the criteria.

Taking the QP week case ... it's pretty pointless in terms of their progression — John de Overa

Agreed. We promote 'quarter in every tower' events not as progression but to encourage as many as possible to feel engaged by taking part in major events. The first was for our centenary and others have been for national ringing events. We do have an annual QP week in the diary, but that's just to act as a gentle jog to bands that occasionally ring quarters and might like a focus.
For progression we rely on regular events, for the well attended Elementary Practices that we introduced a couple of years ago when we identified the need. We also run a number of courses, mainly skill based rather than method based, that are arranged to suit those who need them. See: http://odg.org.uk/sdb/training/

If it isn't working, why are you still doing it?
You've exactly illustrated my point, branches / associations carry on doing the same thing over and over and are apparently puzzled why something that didn't work for the last 10 years still doesn't work this year. — John de Overa

What we are doing is working for some of our members, but not all of our members want to be helped.
Nor are we just doing what we did ten years ago. We are doing other things as well, for which we identified a need.
Beware of over generalisation. It's possible to do some useful things while beong aware that more could be done.

the ethos and purpose of districts/associations needs to change radically f — John de Overa

I'm not sure the purpose needs to change. I see our branch purpose as to help provide the opportunities and services that members can't get from their own bands, and which the Guild is too remote to provide.
The problem is achieving that purpose in the face of (a) limited resources and (b) low desire of many members to avail themselves of such services, even when offered.

when we organise a quarter peal week with a request for many towers we offer to try to find extra ringers (or conductors) for towers that need support.
Sadly we rarely get such requests, presumably because only those towers that can organise their own quarters are interested in ringing at all.

I'm not sure money alone would solve the training and retention problem, — John de Overa

money alone certainly won't. It needs to be intelligently applied to support suitably competent and inspiring people doing useful things. But not being able to spend money when it would help to get things done closes off many options, making it harder to do what is needed when it is needed.

most comments so far seem to be about payment mechanisms, whereas the question was about membership.
In most territorial societies most members are affiliated to a tower, with only a few members 'unattached'. By 'direct membership' I would assume members were not tower affiliated but just 'members'.
That woild also probably mean members were not be affiliated to a branch either, since the branches are defined by the towers within them. So if branches are still needed some other means would be needed to fund their activities. One might be tempted to 'do away with branches', but in the societies I've been involved with, the branch is the unit that runs most activities for members, and the one that members associate with rather than the more remote central society. (I realise that might be different in smaller societies.)
Direct membership would also require a central payment mechanism (which others have commented on) but the reverse isn't true - it's quite possible to implement a central payment mechanism with tower/branch based membership. We are currently running a trial to do just that.
What other effects would direct membership have?
It may well strengthen the link between members and the society for those who remain, but if membership becomes just a personal choice then I suspect far fewer would join than do in the current regime, where all members of a tower are encouraged to join. You might argue that societies would be better with a much smaller, but more committed and active membership than they are with a much larger membership diluted by inactive ringers who hardly ever participate in society activity - but it would be very different.
With no link between members and towers the idea of a territorial society would be weakened, so societies could develop fuzzy borders based not on carving up the territory but merely on how near the activity ringers need to live to be interested. And without a well defined patch of land to define them, some societies might fade away while the more proactive ones expand.
How much of the above would be good or bad can be debated - probably some of each - but it would be quite a different landscape
Going one notch up the ringing structure, the question of 'direct membership' is mor usually discussed in relation to the Central Council. Post reform, it's constitution requires it every few years to consider whether the ringing community would be better served if ringers were direct members rather than being indirectly represented by the ringing societies. That would be a significant change, with potentially significant benefits.
At the first review the Execitive concluded there wasn't support for it yet. But i suspect if we already had it then most people would see it as normal. It's the change that seems impossible.
We've been here before. Twenty years ago I dropped the proposal for an Instructors Guild because although a lot of people wanted it a lot of others were strongly against, and too few supported it. At the time I said it would seem quite normal if we already had it and I predicted that in ten years something like it would arise bottom up. The timing wasn't far wrong, we now have ART.
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are ringing are we aiming to demonstrate the memory capacity of the ringers or create a good sound for the listeners?... — Alison Hodge

We should be doing the latter. Memory is merely one component (along with skill, focus, etc) needed to achieve it. Most of the poor striking I hear is not associated with memory failure (I've mistakes) it is down to lack of skill and/or intent.

I wonder how many capable ringers, who can handle and strike bells well, get stuck in their ringing, become frustrated then leave because they simply find it difficult to remember blue lines, compositions etc?... — Alison Hodge

Not many I suspect.

So why do we not encourage the use of visual aids?... — Alison Hodge

Mostly they don't help, because most people use ropesight to a degree and it's hard to read from a script at the same time. Some people do have a blue line in front of them as a prompt when learning. Would it be worth the effort of developing something to project it on the wall?
Would it help the conductor to have the composition on display in front of her? If I mis call it's not usually because I've forgotten the composition, it's because I've forgotten where I am in it, or got distracted correcting someone shortly before a call.