Ringing Forums

the survey may not be online, but Steve Coleman, who was part of the team, wrote a series of articles explaining and interpreting all the different aspects of the results. It was called something like 'rumaging through' and published in the Ringing World. You should be able to find them, but if not I can dig out the paper copies to check.

I would be surprised if societies that charge a subscription report different numbers from the subs collected. But that's not the main problem, which is that 'paying members' might not actually do any ringing. When I did the analysis locally a few years ago the difference was significant (from memory ~20%). That's far more than the slight over counting from multiple memberships, which I estimated when analysing CC affiliation fees in 2014. (I forget the figure, the paper is on my website.

yes, but some things have already been improved or are in the process of being improved. Look at the reform of the CC (which some societies are thinking about trying to follow) and the framework for method ringing. We still have some of the harder problems to tackle though.

maybe that's because the change ringing did go wrong, or wasn't as well struck as the rounds.
We generally ring for 20 minutes. We used to look outside to see if the crowd was still there, but I don't recall anyone doing that lately.

from any order, notice a pair of adjacent bells that are the wtong way round, eg ....64.... Swap those bells so you get .....46..... Keep doing that and you will end up in rounds.
It doesn't matter which order you swap the pairs in so long as each swap reverses two bells that are the wrong way round. So just do whichever one you can see, until there are no more the wrong way.
Even if someone goes wrong while you are doing it, it doesn't matter so long as you keep swiping pairs the right way round. It will take a bit longer but you'll stil get there.

yes and no. Ringing below the balance certainly makes rhythm easier (which is one reason I like ringing round the back) and the closed handstroke certainly makes the sound flow more urgently, but the open handstroke effect is not so simple. A bell doesn't naturally ring evenly at both strokes. The weight of the rope makes the backstroke quicker than the handstroke. It probably isn't the exact one blow needed for open lead ringing but not is it the zero gap needed to ring cartwheel.

Midsomer Murders is long because it tells a quite complex story, woven around ringing but with many other strands. They oral minutes of ringing was quite short. Even so it took several hours of filming.
The shortest TV show we were in was the BBC breakfast article about bellringing in Mike Bushel's series of sampling lots of different sports (according to Guinness Book of Records he has done more than anyone else). That lasted 5 minutes - short enough for you? And he said we would have an audience of 12 million over the four hourly showings. I gather there was a spike in learning to ring enquirers just after it but don't know if any stuck.

in my experience the comparator has been the choir rather than the organist.

one of the 'disruptive events' that I considered in the final article on Thinking The Unthinkable was the effect an energy crisis would have on a ringing community that has become dependent on car travel, see: https://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/Unthinkable/10.pdf

ODG does. AFIA it supposedly pays the cost of printing the peal in the report, but I've no idea whether the cost is comparable to the fee. I don't know what the print run is, we haven't provided a report for each member for many years.

I believe the age variation is based on the likelihood of loss of income

I find it hard to believe that a personal accident policy would not pay the person who had the accident. The society can't suffer an injury like loss of limb.
The ODG policy is certainly described in terms of benefits to members, and claims made by members. See: http://ODG.org.uk/insurance/

in most cases I suspect the answer is no. But perhaps a more important question, and one they should answer first, is have they thought about what insurance cover they need (related to ringing).

intersting article. Certainly there are positive aspects of the voluntary model, which may partly explain why it has persisted. But I don't think the example in the story is a very good analogy for teaching ringing. Jack already had the skill to play and was playing with the older man as an equal. I think that would equate more closely to ringing with Jack the ringer in quarter peals, where both parties benefit. That already happens a lot, and afia no one has suggested payment for it.
The question for ringing is how to get enough Jacks an Jill's to the point where they can take part on on an equal footing in collective ringing. That requires far more individual tuition to develop the core skills than it would for a game like pool. The practical problem is the limited number of teachers who are competent to impart the skills, are in the right places where they are needed, and have enough time to give away for the number of re ruins needed. The result is not enough quality teaching for enough people.
So how do you increase the supply of hours of competent tuition? First you motivate competent teachers with spare time to give it away. We already do that, but we need more. How do you persuade competent people who don't have time to give away because they are busy trying to make a living? What happens with other performance arts? Some people make part of their living by being paid for teaching. Oh, I forgot, ringers don't believe in that. So let's carry on doing the same as before and hope for a different outcome.
I don't suggest that charging is a panacea. It's not, because we are all locked into a different way of doing things, so it's hard for any individual to change. The entrepreneurs who could make it work will deploy their skills doing other things where there is a demand. Ruling it out seems a needless constraint to impose on ourselves.

not familiar with the death slide variant, but I know of teddies descending by 'parachute'.

depends what you've already done!
Work out a nominal cost for various components and invite people to sponsor one, with the option to choose the inscription. We did that with bells and headstocks (which were fitted with stainless steel plaques). You could include wheels, pulleys, sliders, etc but maybe not practical to try to fit plaques.

realistic numbers would be a good thing surely, because an affiliation fee set to provide the required income would be more secure if the rate was based on real numbers rather than fictitious numbers that might evaporate.

a survey we did in 2017 came up with 30% of members who never or rarely ring, see: http://www.odg.org.uk/sdb/documents/minutes_reports/Results6.pdf
In most cases I don't think it was people having their subs paid, after all £8 per year is small change for most people who like to think they still belong.

I don't want to behave like I did 50 years ago, that was during the period when I hardly ever rang and life was full of other things.

I just discovered that the both the forums and conversations are paginated, which I hadn't realised, and which doesn't seem to be ideally implemented.
First, I saw a reply and tried to scroll up to see what it was responding to. It wasn't the comment above, and there were no others shown. After several attempts to scroll failed to work I spotted the tiny 1 and 2 at the bottom and realised the were pages and got to the earlier page.
I can see the benefit of hiding older comments from initial display but it would be more helpful to show the last 10 (or 20 or whatever the limit is) rather than cutting off at a fixed point.
Then I discovered 5 similar tabs at the bottom of the list of conversations. I assumed that like the lower ones listed on the first 'page' they would have no 'new' comments, but out of curiousity I had a look anyway and discovered a handful that did have 'new' comments.
I realise that 'new' means 'I have not read them'. The system obviously keeps track of that and uses that information to open each conversation at the first comment I haven't seen.
So why can't the same logic ensure that the list of conversations I am shown includes any with comments that I haven't seen?