Ringing Forums

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.

I have always assumed it's a combination of practicality and machismo. One might draw a parallel with country dancing, which had some similarities, albeit shorter, less complex performances.

there are tw approaches to using the coursing order in Gradsire: the usual one and the one I worked out for myself. The former uses the whole order, which has to be transposed every lead but is unchanged by a bob. The approach I discovered treats the hunt bell separately and only changes at a call. There are pros and cons with each.
I described the system I worked out in The Tower Handbook (now on my website). I think I might have written an article for The Learning Curve, but I can't check because a couple of years ago the CC website stopped providing a lot of the content to any non- recent browser, including my iPad, which is all I've got here.

we produced this a while ago.
http://www.odg.org.uk/sdb/services/banner.html
enlarged here
http://www.odg.org.uk/sdb/services/bannerdetail.html

I am not sure if everyone calls it sonic mapping, but we do in Birmingham. So the sequence was done in whole pulls with an additional bell coming in on each handstroke. — Simon Linford

sounds like partial firing to me. Strictly firing is a rising arpeggio but to the precision most people can manage it might as well be chords.

the effort is going into making the technology work properly, ie making sure that the measurements reflect the real forces under different conditions,which is harder than you might imagine. Also, trying to get a system that can be cheap enough to encourage widespread use.
As for your question, it would need to be more precise about what is meant by'pulling harder' and 'going faster'.

I wrote the last progress update for the RW in December 2019. CoViD disrupted things but there has been further work since then, and I am currently in correspondence with developers.

as a learner, I really need two practice nights a week, and general practices tended to be a bit of a waste when it was one go at rounds, — Tristan Lockheart

That's a good example of the inefficiency of the way people develop as ringers compared with many other skilled activities. One way to increase the efficiency, and potentially reducing the participant cost, would be the much more widespread use of simulators. That requires some investment and a culture change, but the payback is considerable in terms of the practice hours that can be provided per trainee hour, per week at a location, and per unit supporting effort.

How are you defining costs? In the context of cost being a barrier to progression in sport I think it would be interpreted as cost to the individual or family, for example buying equipment. in ringing there are hardly any such costs. The most notable would be the cost of transport to events, but while I am sure lack of transport limits some ringers I suspect it's not the monetary cost so much as th time cost.
The tuition costs, which would be born by the family of a child learning a sport are invisible in ringing because they are invariably born by the teacher and supporters as opportunity costs, which get overlooked when counting cash that changes hands.
In short, I think it would require great care to do a meaningful financial comparison between ringing and sport. You would need to take in many other factors and try to find valid equivalences.
And sadly, any valid lessons to emerge from such an analysis would probably fall on deaf ears because 'ringing is different' and 'ringing isn't like sport', and unlike in the real world, ringers don't like to talk about money and ringing in thee same sentence.

I think Peter is missing the point when I said 'what is the difference'. We all know the way things are done tends to be different, with ringers assuming they can have free use of facilities without formal agreements, and considering themselves generous if the make a token donation. But that wasn't what I asked.
What is the inherent difference between two groups using someone else's building and facilities in order to persue their activity that justifies one group paying a sensible amount with a formal agreement and the other group not doing so?
We like to think ringers are different, and we've got used to acting as if we are. But I think I would find it hard to make the case that it should be that way to someone who assumed that all groups shoul be treated similarly.

If the village choir hires the church for a concert or the local slimming group hires the church hall, those are very different circumstance — Peter Sotheran

Apart from changing the name of the group involved, what is the difference between a band of ringers booking the tower for a peal and a band of singers booking the nave for a a rehearsal?