Ringing Forums

I’m not sure what’s meant by ‘a recruitment network’? Please could you explain.

Perhaps it means getting some sort of process in place for managing requests that can currently come in from multiple different sources, e.g.

* https://cccbr.org.uk/bellringing/learn/
* https://bellringing.org
* http://www.ringingteachers.org/

As well as the many related association pages, e.g.

* https://birminghambells.com/
* https://derbyda.org.uk/about/education/training-request-individual/

but that's just a guess...

a reasonable guess. Reading again what Tina said I think it is more than that though. The existing mechanisms do their best but one hears criticicisms that they don't always point people in the best direction.
It's not just a matter of pointing to the nearest tower or the nearest ART teacher or whatever. There are lots of factors to consider to make the system work effectively for all parties involved. I did some exploration of the topic back in 2012, see Here
One thing I didn't consider then, but which Tina mentioned explicitly, is the capacity to take on new recruits. Assuming that any tower can at any time take on unlimited recruits is naive, and designing a system on that assumption would be like designing an online shop with no idea of who has what in stock - a recipe for disgruntled customers and harassed shopkeepers.
When Tina says it's a chunky project I assume she is thinking that it will rely on a lot of that knowledge, and quite possibly distributed decision making. Getting that to work will be chunky.

I think the point about capacity is an important one to consider. I know of one tower that ended up with 10 - 15 new learners as a result of RftK, which doesn't seem remotely sustainable. We've limited our learners to a maximum of two per training session as we only have one teacher, even if that has meant asking people to wait (which they have). The reasoning is that it's better to try to get a smaller number of people ringing with the band a s quickly as possible rather than giving more people a poorer experience. Plus a steady supply of new ringers is easier for the rest of the band to integrate.

And a good guess John. Our idea is to bring these sources together, but also as John Harrison points out, build on those connections to create a good end-to-end journey for a new ringer.

We have learned some lessons: so for Ringing Remembers, there was an effective but quite manual process, which took a lot of effort from the volunteers who ran that. For Ring for the King, the process was a little more automated but still required a considerable number of person-hours to get recruits to a reasonable destination. And we weren't successful at getting all the queries to a reasonable destination. Some just disappeared into a black hole of non-communication, due to not knowing where to send them. In other ways, the number of recruits simply overwhelmed the available resource to manage it.

So, without jumping straight to solutions, we can define some desirable outcomes:
- better information online for new ringers
- make that information easier to find
- ensure that potential ringers (or simply curious public) has a positive experience of bellringing (regardless of whether they continue to become ringers)

Some tactical solutions are reasonably easy to define - a single entry point into a good recruitment website/channel well supported with marketing is a practical solution that solves part of the problem.

How do we determine where they go after that? That is the trickier part, and we don't have easy answers to that. That is why this is a marathon rather than a sprint.

We aren't going to solve it all straight away either. That is no reason to try and make it better, and there are a lot of creative problem solvers in bellringing.

I absolutely agree it's a marathon and not a sprint, particularly when it comes to ongoing learning. Relatively speaking it's quick and easy to get someone ringing rounds and CCs, progressing to method ringing is obviously much harder and takes much longer, and some towers can struggle to provide appropriate support. And of course not everyone who starts ringing will want to progress that far anyway. ART is great at the early stages, but unless you are at a strong tower, progress can often stall after around L3. I'm not sure how you address that, but I do think it needs addressing.