Ringing Forums

I was very impressed with an article in the Ringing World a few months ago about Barnes and how all learners at Barnes are quickly taught how to help an early stage learner with handling practice, so that the fear is removed and the control is learnt very early on.
Teaching a learner while people wince in the background is no help to anyone so I agree, understanding what is happening so you can be rescued calmly (if needed) and better still advised before a rescue is needed on how to adjust, enables the ringer to think about striking, etc rather than worrying about why the bell sometimes behaves unexpectedly.
Whilst some people might be talent spotting many are looking for reliable ringers who support their local tower regularly and ensure that the bells are rung ‘nicely’ for the audience outside. Progression will is not easy if the band is largely at a similar stage of experience and ability so make use of any branch or district support available but don’t lose heart, progress will still come.

I agree that I will always let someone have a go on their own to feel more settled before ringing in rounds if they are new to the bell. I think it’s easier for someone to find their ideal level of pull, place to catch, etc when ringing alone, without the worry of fitting in with overall timing.

Thank you Mark! I’m not sure that any of the local ringers in Wigan are part of this forum so I will pass on your message through the Lancashire Association to the Wigan band.

It looks like a chiming bell, hung from the bracket so it would be seen from outside the church. Probably for chiming with a hammer hitting against it but could be that a rope is tied to the clapper (rather than a full circle ringing bell). It would help to know the size of the bell and whether there is any inscription to say who made it and when.

This sounds like a lack of communication from the trainer. To ask someone to talk to a learner while they are ringing (or while others are ringing) means that other ringers need to know to ignore it (and / or the person asked to talk needs to judge their volume). Unfortunately some people find it very hard to ring while there is talking happening so if they didn’t know this was an instruction they can react very crossly. It is definitely worth discussing what happened and why with the tower captain and you may find that the person who shouted is now sorry that they hadn’t understood the situation and, probably, were louder and more abrupt than they expected themselves to be.
When finding helpers for training sessions many trainers know which experienced ringers can be helpers and which struggle to keep right if the learners are struggling, which are patient and calm and which get agitated when it is not going as expected. This experienced ringer may have learnt something about themselves in this experience.

surely they do but… and here is our problem… the experienced ringer leading the practice is a volunteer with no teaching training, probably no mentor to go for advice and perhaps limited interest being a better teacher. Whilst there are many great people teaching, running practices, offering guidance there are still some towers where it doesn’t happen and is unlikely to change unless someone is willing to challenge what is happening and invest time to help to improve it.
You could try asking the questions of the tower captain or teacher involved but I understand why you might not if it’s a tower you only go to occasionally and you don’t intend to get more involved.
Some might say it’s the district ringing masters role to keep an eye on the overall quality of practices but it’s probably not realistic to expect them to be able to support improvement in all towers that need it.
You can probably offer two bits of advice - tell the learner with potential which other local practices or district trainings might benefit them and suggest the teacher has a look at the ART website or CCCBR website for resources like the plain hunt toolkit, how to run an effective practice and plain bob toolkit. But without a high investment of time it is difficult to get a real step change started in a tower with an inexperienced or uninterested tower captain / teacher.

I found reference in the Mobile Belfry web page to lesson plans trialled by Jason Hughes in 2021 and I can see this is a topic in the workgroup for Young Ringers. But I can’t find the actual lesson plans! Try emailing andreadothaynesatcccbrdotorgdotuk as the workgroup lead for Young Ringers and hopefully she can send you the lesson plans which have been developed.
This information is designed for guides and scouts but might also be helpful: https://cccbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Bluebells-Challenge-Syllabus-March-2023.pdf
I know Jen Thomas (in the Young Ringers workgroup) has been involved with this stuff so if you can’t get hold of Andrea let me know and I can give you Jen’s email address (but not on the forum).

The Coronation was one good example of the struggle to cover multiple churches in the same day (or weekend) and Christmas is the classic example where everyone wants ringing for a carol service on a Sunday afternoon about two weeks before Christmas.
In some cases we have rung before one service then after a service elsewhere but depending on the number of ringers available it’s not possible to ring every time at every tower and there are times when we have used the opportunity to encourage the vicar to plan to talk about ringing with the congregation in the hope of finding more ringers before the next year, explaining the time it takes to learn, etc.
I think there is no easy answer, although I wish local vicars would talk to each other and try to avoid the clashes whenever possible, I guess while only ringers are impacted they won’t see a reason to off-set service times for a ringing equivalent of a pub crawl!

I think this does happen, but it depends on where you ring and how proactive you are to find / take opportunities to keep learning.
There is lots on the internet to go to if you want to see a potential path and read around the subject of method construction or similar. Many experienced ringers enjoy nothing more than a curious less experienced ringer who will listen as they explain something detailed about next steps in method ringing.
I think we don’t have a continuous learning culture in bellringing overall, there is a level of acceptance that many people reach a stage which is comfortable for them and the band they ring with so there is no further push unless either the ringer or the tower captain keeps a push for continuous progress.
This then means that for those who do want to keep progressing finding like minded ringers to ring with and more experienced ringers to support gradually requires travelling further and further.
The Cast of 1000 demonstrated this to a reasonable extent, with some lockdown ringing room sessions but a real difficulty in transferring to tower ringing to support surprise major development.

I know a couple of towers which avoid spending too much time on doubles and prefer to get ringers used to minor as quickly as possible, plain hunt and beyond. The Learning the Ropes scheme offers options to head in either direction and I think this is sensible because it does depend on the band around you.
@Martyn Bristow points out that for a learner in his band it would be tough to reach readiness for a quarter, let alone a peal, this is a definite issue in some areas and raises the question of how well people can be supported if the only option is to travel further for less frequent opportunities for developmental ringing.

The middle third - which I suppose is the one Simon is concerned about - is those ringers who could be quite good if given the chance to ring with really good ringers.

I think this is the main concern for many of the threads on this forum.
There is a reasonable size group of ringers spread across the country (world) who would like more opportunities to ring with ringers more experienced than them so that they can progress in a better development environment but there are not enough experienced ringers to go around and many of them are not that interested in ringing to support the progress of others (sometimes because they have experienced ringing with ringers who are not particularly keen to improve their ringing and then that’s frustrating).
Some people experience this inability to progress efficiently at plain hunt, for others it comes in surprise ringing or ringing on higher numbers and for some it comes when wanting to ring quarters or peals. In all cases it’s about the availability and willingness of experienced ringers to support those developing their skills and a gradual decline in the numbers of experienced ringers means that more and more new ringers will hit this frustration.
We can try to persuade experienced ringers to give their time to ringers who commit to doing their homework and focusing on high quality ringing but we also need to think about how ringers and bands can progress with simulators, regional courses, etc and some of this is already happening but there is no quick and simple answer for the ideal opportunity to ring with a strong band around you for fast progress.

We have a keen experienced conductor who likes to get people through their first peal! But I appreciate this is different to the regular peal band opportunities.
A few years ago the Central Council made a push for getting 300 (?) new people to ring a peal in a year. He got 8 people to ring their first peal that year.
On the other hand one of the most prolific peal ringers local to us rang many more peals that year but none with someone for whom it was a first peal. So perhaps you need that first opportunity with someone who’s target is to support ringers development and that helps you prove readiness to join some of the experienced peal ringing bands for a peal or two.

@John de Overa says “ There's been posts on here recently about the parlous state of many associations, even the mighty Yorkshire is struggling. Duplicating the same services across multiple associations is a poor use of scarce resources and there's no justification for continuing that situation, other than the inertia of the associations themselves.”
Which suggests that he would ‘nationalise’ (or even globalise) the ringing set up so that a ringer has one membership, one website to check for tower info and practice info, one fund for Bell Restoration (and perhaps another for training), etc.
All the volunteer time currently invested in the many Associations and Guilds would be available for ringing, teaching, developing other ringers as it takes less time to administrate one giant organisation than 30+ smaller ones.
However, what we tend to see in human nature is a desire to interact and to innovate in smaller groups. So big organisations find that individual departments or offices invent their own ‘better’ or more suited to them ways of doing things and lose some of the imagined efficiency (or lose some of the motivation to act). It becomes very hard to reach agreement on a way forward or to find a solution that works for everyone in a larger organisation so people set up smaller groups within the organisation to modify the standard to suit them and efficiency fades.
Crag looked at many models and saw potential but many people don’t want to ‘give away’ control to a single national / global organisation as they don’t feel it would consider their local / particular needs (and to some extent they are right as you only get the efficiency by standardising to at least some extent).
I don’t think that is inertia, I think it is a considered choice and would require some very convincing work to demonstrate how a single organisation would bring benefit to change people’s minds.

I was asked the other day why we don’t use Dove as the one website for tower information, including tower contacts. I think a major reason is that the chasing it takes locally to ensure the contact information is accurate would become very difficult on a national scale. So each Association maintains their own website with tower contact information and Dove simply links to these sites (on the best ones direct to the relevant tower page). Every year I ask 40 tower contacts to confirm that their information is accurate and need to chase around 15 to get an answer. If this was multiplied up to become a global task it becomes near to impossible (or it becomes a stretched out chain that each Association / Branch contact is asked to chase within their area but someone still needs to know when the task is completed per Association / Branch).
Associations have different views on publishing tower contacts emails and phone numbers vs. using generic email addresses or contact forms so Dove would need to be able to handle these differences or people would need to accept a standard approach.
This is just one example where in theory a single approach would help but isn’t a silver bullet.

Switching from local to national doesn’t straightforwardly reduce the workload and we haven’t yet found (as far as I can see) an area to demonstrate the benefit of the global organisation which would convince people in local Associations to consider converting to a direct membership model with the efficiency which comes from one website, one membership process, one treasurer ensuring financial stability, etc.

I think @Phillip George is right that ringing the bells probably doesn’t make any difference to church attendance and I too ring before services because I enjoy ringing but I also agree with @Alan C that it would be dishonest to try to disconnect it completely.
I know lots of ringers who manage this little tension as a non religious ringer but I do think it influences how we recruit because we do need to be respectful of the church as the owner of the bells.

I think it is not unknown and not completely ignored but declining attendance in churches which have bells (C of E mainly) is also a factor which we struggle to relate to bellringing recruitment.
100 years ago most people went to church and bellringing was an option seen and heard by the congregation.
At some point in the 1980’s (ish, I think) ringing became popular with people who were not religious but enjoyed the patterns involved in methods and proving new methods or peals with computing technology which created a fresh influx of ringers at University age. This is something I’ve been told so feel free to correct me.
That level of recruitment didn’t continue and so we have a population of religious ringers and a population of non religious ringers and both are getting older and now we struggle with how to present ringing as an activity to non religious people (let alone people from other religions) to boost numbers without being disrespectful to the church which provides the bells.
I know a few ringers (like me) who are not entirely comfortable with ‘calling people to service’ to a religion which can be criticised for its attitude to some people and topics within the community.
There is a fine line to tread in recruitment and the relationship with the church as increasingly we need to recruit non religious people whilst respecting the church as host of the bells.

It is definitely a good idea to go to a range of different practices and see which ones can offer you opportunities to develop and which less so. Most people ring at whichever tower is most convenient for them geographically but many also go to one or more other practices either most weeks or once a month and this variety can be very useful. So you don’t necessarily need to leave your current main tower but it is a good idea to join other practices and talk about what you would like to ring.
If you ask your tower captain for a chat about your ringing development, as a one to one chat outside of a busy practice, would you be able to have an honest conversation about what you would like to ring and why you don’t get given the opportunity? Maybe they don’t realise how important it is to you to keep learning new things, maybe they feel that you need to improve something in handling or striking before you can ring more complicated methods, maybe they think people should always learn to ring Kent before they ring Cambridge. Without talking about the gap between what you want and what you get it is hard to know whether you could get more of what you want where you are.

I agree, but there are many people in bellringing who are leading practices and teaching who don’t have specific teaching skills. I was trying to provide context related to the question posed, not saying that this is right.

Whilst one to one tuition helps a lot this learner probably has a strong aptitude for the kind of pattern learning needed for ringing. There is a virtuous circle that can happen when someone responds well to advice and tuition, because it clicks for them as a way to learn and then the teacher finds it rewarding to help them and so on.
Different ringers have different ways of learning and thinking about ringing and (similar to the workplace) it can be that an experienced ringer finds it rewarding to help a less experienced ringer who thinks in a similar way to them, it makes it easy for them to help the learner to make progress.
This is along the lines of unconscious bias and is quite common in many areas in life.
You can try to have an open conversation with the tutor to ask whether you too could have more one to one tuition, or more opportunities to practice your next skill and you might get some constructive feedback on what they think you need to work on to make the next steps, etc.
But you might also find it helps to talk to other experienced ringers who you see regularly and see if there is someone who approaches learning in ringing in a similar way to you, who might find it easy to relate to your learning style and therefore be able to offer you tuition which has faster success for you.

People do learn differently and at different speeds, and you see this clearly in ringing, so don’t be too concerned about the progress of another ringer but do ask what you need to do to be given more chances to practice what you are learning.

I think asking ringers to make a donation as part of a weekly practice, towards the future maintenance of the bells or tea and biscuits, etc is fairly normal and generally very inexpensive.
I think charging £5+ each week would start to exclude some people who enjoy ringing but could not afford to join two or more practices a week at that kind of cost.
But my main concern with the original suggestion of a course which costs £10 per week so that the leader(s) of the course get paid at wedding type rates is that you then have to define who is helping and who is learning and I think in many weekly practices there are people who join and by doing so bring strength and support to the band but do not expect to be paid to be there, but certainly wouldn’t want to pay to join in.
I regularly collect donations from ringers on outing, at district practices and for meetings with a prepared tea and I am very conscious that whilst some people happily offer more money and don’t want change for some others making the donation has an impact on their budget for the week. With a suggested donation it can be quietly handled that some people give less but once you start setting a charge it becomes harder for people to say that they would like to join in but can’t and you risk changing the demographics.
But this is just my view and I know towers and associations will try different things and see what they learn in the process and the majority of ringers can happily donate or pay more for ringing opportunities, especially when it is structured to benefit their level of skill and experience.

for my own part, yes, I am new to having taken on a CCCBR workgroup role so there are lots of things I don’t know yet and I have limited spare time so progress will be gradual.
My sister recently told me that volunteering is a frustrating experience because you get nothing for it but still get all the criticism of a professional and I know that this is a barrier to getting people to take on responsibilities to try to tackle difficult situations.
Working in one tower you can make a manageable difference fairly quickly, extending to a district I find I achieve less or there are more people still dissatisfied with the practices and outings organised, taking it to the international level where there are few avenues for easy communication makes it even harder to know what people want and then to meet those needs (with a specific remit and limited volunteer capacity) so I’m taking my time to find my way and using everything from Facebook, the RW, these forums and the many ringers I talk to through ringing to learn.
My first effort was promoting National Volunteers Week and one of my learnings from that is that it’s not easy to get ideas from CCCBR to individual tower contacts or ringers.

I agree that at the moment Ringing 2030 is not a clear vision which all Associations or all towers can consider and then start to build into but I think this is part of what is planned.
Lots of towers are already doing a lot and finding ways to gather those examples and share the news on what works well is important. Currently I see this mainly in Ringing World articles, Facebook posts, etc rather than in a structured way which makes it easy for people to search and find ideas to fit their tower needs. This definitely falls into my intention in Leadership Information (but obviously with a focus on ‘leadership’ rather than recruitment, etc. I think volunteers in every workgroup area are aiming to make it easier for towers, districts, guilds, etc to learn from each other and be more successful but I also think there will always be multiple views on the best way to do this.