Ringing Forums

This is what Piddinghoe have planned. By coincidence I rang there today and saw the flyer. https://www.newhavenfestival.co.uk/events/ring-in-the-new

I know young ringers in the London area who keep a record of how many towers they have been to and would enjoy Open Day opportunities to ring at new towers.
So with less new ringers in the last forty years than the forty years (ish?) before there will be less of them but I’d say there is a still a proportion who are tower grabbers and more who are interested in a day out once in a while.

We have a similar-ish experience. Having contacted all tower contacts to ask when they plan to ring and whether they need support the ones who are most likely to need support are the least likely to have responded. I think there is a natural alignment in this and not a huge amount can be done to change it except gradually growing the available and active ringers in any geographical area and encouraging them to visit other towers locally and start to strengthen the bands which can only currently ring three for Sunday service or only ring once a month for Sunday service. We are looking at the complete Coronation weekend to aim to get every tower to ring, with support where needed and are focusing the learners on the long term, beyond the Coronation, for opportunities to ring at more and more towers.

I think you will find it difficult to ring more peals until you have a wider range of methods to ring for quarter peals. There will be chances to tenor for a peal but there are limited chance for peals of doubles and many more peal opportunities once you can ring varied minor methods or triples methods because these make for more interesting peal opportunities for every ringer in the band. So don’t be too fixed on peal ringing at this stage, look for opportunities to learn more methods as minor or triples and then find the quarter peal bands to cement those methods. You are on the border of Essex and Herts so have two potential district ringing masters to help you find the opportunities but start by looking at the regular practices or training sessions which will extend your methods. This will later lead to peal ringing opportunities and the experience from covering for peals will stand you in good stead for keeping concentration when you ring peals inside.

I think it has to be considered case by case and it is about the PR value for ringing vs. the time and effort to set it up.
I think we can also be clear about what is feasible.
With the Sky News example two Kent towers arranged special sessions to get young learners in, in London we simply invited them to an existing planned quarter peal attempt and accepted 15 minutes of diversion.
So if the request comes from an agency / media channel less likely to generate useful press and new recruits we can tell them when they could join a normal practice but not offer to arrange anything special but for the right media it is worth arranging something special.
Looking at it another way… if the Central Council / International organisation benefits maybe it should be willing to pay something to bands that take on the special press requests and go out of their way to generate national PR.
I can’t imagine the TV companies will pay in most cases as for them it is a minor community interest story and not a revenue generating headline story.

@Martyn Bristow you are definitely welcome, most bands are very happy when a ringer returns and doesn’t need to start at basic handling but can jump straight in to ringing with the band.
I agree with you that for people to ring quarter peals and peals the stepping stone opportunities are needed. The simple issue is that proportionately there are now more people needing the opportunity and less people available to support the opportunities (at surprise level at least) compared to 30 years ago and many of those who could support (and do support) are reaching an age where they don’t want to ring so often or where they want to focus on ringing in a way which pleases them more of the time.
So the leaner generations of ringers have to work through the learning curve of more advanced ringing with less support and greater risk that it might go wrong and this means bands advance at a slower pace.
Having a local band to support and a busy life can limit the chances to advance faster and Associations can try to offer focused practices for advanced ringing but it will still need people to commit, to travel, to support so it does become more stretched when the pool of ringers gets smaller.
There are no easy solutions and your dilemma is understood by many ringers.

Two main pieces of advice (and this is a common complaint / feedback):
Try practicing grip and release with something rope size, dressing gown cord or similar, to get your hands used to it, repeatedly whilst watching tv or waiting for the kettle to boil
Try to grip less and have faith that the rope will stay where it needs to be, explain the mechanic that the rope ‘wants’ to move up and down in a straight line with natural rhythm from the wheel so you can work with it and then don’t need to actively, fiercely grip the rope

If it doesn’t feel better within a couple of weeks of trying both then it is worth seeing a doctor in case it really is a ‘tennis elbow’ type issue but often it is just that it’s something new and the ringer is gripping as though their life depended on it.

I think a lot of people who enjoy the social aspect of ringing enjoy it precisely because it is in the periphery! For people who want some social contact regularly but don’t have a group of friends to meet in the pub once a week, where a social club sounds too much, perhaps intimidating then the gentle social contact which ringing give you is very satisfying.
I think the invitation to join in and be able to join a band is a good analogy, no need to be a full time concerto but enjoy a regular practice with others who are also building their skills and enjoying practicing together.

I think emphasising the chance to keep learning, to work as a team, the social side and the chance to meet new people on outings, when you visit a new city and to have a wider variety of people you see regularly because bellringing often introduces you to people you wouldn’t have met through studies or work. So it’s a hobby a bit like joining an orchestra or amateur dramatics or a rambling group. If you have a variety of people being interviewed this is likely to come out naturally but I think some people think bellringing will be very serious, religious and once you have learnt then you just do it (because they don’t know we have thousands of different methods to try!).

I think Peter has provided very valid feedback here. The document does a job to enable safe running of a tower but the leadership, human interaction and social side are missing in the style of the document. Unfortunately this means that people most likely to need it, because they’ve not been part of a well led band where they have learnt the skills to run the tower over time, get a rather daunting and formal impression of what is needed. In many cases the soft skills are harder to teach but they are invaluable to good leadership which builds a strong and happy band who enjoy their ringing practice.

I think you are right, you want them to understand a bit about Bellringing, to consider whether they might like to learn and to be ready to talk about what they saw, heard and learnt to interested friends and family. Maybe you can ask them to fill in some feedback afterwards, to say what was interesting for them, what was confusing for them, what most surprised them. This might help future similar open day tours and could help with recruitment / pr ideas for what the public need to know to understand that it is real people, etc.

The coronation will be an interesting opportunity to see how many peals might be rung in a year, given a very good reason to ring. Maybe this will encourage people to ring their first peal, or their first peal for years.
Potentially a decline in peal ringing fits with many things in life which are becoming shorter, faster experiences as everyone is busy and / or has shorter attention spans.
Perhaps we need a focus, alongside the ring for the king campaign to ring every bell, on encouraging people to ring a peal and sharing how this can be prepared for and most manageable - practice quarters beforehand, extents or lengths of different methods to keep it interesting, a chance to request a conductor for a band which may not have anyone experienced to conduct a peal for them?

In the Middlesex Association after paying subs for 40 years you become a life member and don’t pay subs any more.
You can also purchase life membership, it currently costs equivalent to 20 years of today’s subs price. But generally it is not encouraged because it requires a certain amount of accounting headache and it’s much easier to have annual subs, reflecting more closely the involved and active ringers.

We’ve not considered taking away the 40 year benefit for life membership but I guess in theory you could introduce it gradually by letting people know that if they’ve paid less than 20 years so far then they will need 50 years instead of 40 to get life membership and if they’ve paid less than 10 years then they should no longer expect life membership.
I don’t see any reason to take away the long service benefit but it could be phased out if an Association wanted to.

I like the idea of Bell Sunday and I hope we can use it to raise awareness in church congregations that people ring bells, one person per bell (most of the time) and that nearly anyone can learn!

In lots of ways this still gives us around 80% of the population who would be open to bellringing as a hobby, because those with no religion are often comfortable to ring (like me). But it does reflect the decreasing church attendance and the risk from there that churches close and become apartments or similar. Although it’s also possible that the core of those identifying as Christian now are the church goers, where many people ticked Christian because they had no active religion but ‘ethnically’ associated with Christianity. So more research to do to understand our potential audience for recruitment!

Yes, in principle I agree but in practice I see it to a certain extent within a tower band and from selected people within a district or association but there are many, many ringers who only ring for the ringing which suits them (perhaps at different stages in their ringing career they have more and less time available) and reaching the point where we need 25% more bellringers (as a target) is a very big ask for the 25% (ish, pure guesstimate) who will put in the extra work to try and achieve this.

The challenge in recruiting and teaching new ringers, including in group courses at later stages of learning, is that we ‘need’ one new ringer for every four current active ringers (if the Ring for the King stats are accurate) but less than one in four active ringers can teach handling or will give up additional time for teaching and helping in a structured session designed for the learner.
So those that do have to invest a significant amount of time in teaching and helping learners. This can easily lead to frustration or burnout for the originally willing volunteer. Trying to offer the best possible experience to every recruit and enjoy your own ringing opportunities is time consuming or means something loses out.
I do think it helps new learners to be part of the community of the ringing practice and that most who attend a training course (whether half a day locally or a longer course) enjoy the experience and feel that they have benefited but I also think this is part of how we teach because volunteers don’t have time to offer one to one (let alone a band built to support a learner for constant plain hunt or whatever) for every learner for all of their rope time.
I would like to see more ringers recognise that they can give back for the support they have received (often still receive) by helping others in a wide range of ways from a relatively early stage in their own learning. If we could make it obvious for everyone that bellringing requires teamwork all the way through we could spread the work wider and we might then find it easier to offer better quality teaching to more of our new recruits and re-build, still as a volunteer led organisation.

I think the original article highlighted the different approaches to the future of ringing.
On the one hand there is an aim to have active towers where ringers can enjoy progressing to exciting methods or excellent called changes as a purpose in itself, an enjoyable hobby using high quality skill. On the other hand there is an aim to ensure church bells can be rung regularly for services to a good standard.
For lots of ringers these two cross over and they ring for services, sometimes with limited numbers and limited chance to use their skill but on other days or at other towers they get the challenge of stretching their skills with a band of ringers who want to learn new methods and / or focus on perfect striking for the best music.
Part of what holds us back or part of what needs to be debated in the Ringing 2030 plan is how we balance the two aims as they do make a huge difference to how you recruit, teach and approach ringing.

Middlesex Association
£10 adult membership
1. Districts spend money from the general fund when needed (but very little is spent)
2. 60% is spent within the general fund:
20% covers insurance
20% other general costs like the annual report
In recent years around 20% has been spent on training installations and activities
3. Roughly 40% goes to the BRF
4. Any tower wanting a BRF contribution makes a grant request for an amount so the % of the total restoration cost is not used as a measure and small jobs may get a higher % from the BRF than big jobs
5. We keep enough in the general account for one year of no subscriptions but everything else is channeled to the the BRF and / or training related activities and installations

Yes, I understand the point but I still think it is hard for someone of a different religion to feel comfortable with the extent to which ringing relates to the Christian church. Relatively easy for an atheist or agnostic, harder for someone who actively believes in a different religion. And most Associations and Guilds have wording about Christianity in their ‘purpose’ (as does the CCCBR) so diversity will always be limited to some extent (although there are plenty of other aspects of diversity in age, ethnicity and ability/ disability, neurodiversity etc where bellringing can do well.