Ringing Forums

Most of these seem to have been rung by a single person, on a dumbbell, with Abel ringing the others. Not my cup of tea personally, but if someone wants to do it, then fine. Even send it up to BellBoard - there's a helpful button so people can exclude those performances if they so wish. But I'm not convinced people should be able to name methods in the official CC library on this basis. 6.C.2(n) states that performances with only one ringer should be witnessed by an umpire, but this doesn't appear to be the case in these instances.Even if there was an umpire present it just doesn't feel "right". Thoughts anyone?

The team revising the Framework for Method Ringing last year agreed with you, Stephen. Ringers have been ringing quarters and even peals on their own for practice for many years, and it is only during lockdown that people started to publish them on BellBoard as performances. A particular concern with the naming of new methods like this is that several members of a band planning a performance might ring a solo quarter of that method for practice on a simulator. In that situation it would be perverse for a practice quarter by one individual to be credited as the first performance in the method rather than the intended performance with an all human band. For this reason the revised Framework for Method Ringing contains a new clause under 5.E.1 Right to Name.

g) The Performance was rung by an all-human Band.

Consultation of this version 2 of the Framework was completed in July 2021 and it is currently waiting for the next meeting of the Central Council Executive to approve its implementation.

The methods published this week were rung on a tower bell simulator in 2020/21 as part of Sue Marsden's Minor to Major Lockdown Challenge, which could be argued as a reasonable exception. While we will continue to accept methods named this way until the new Framework comes into force, we trust that ringers will respect the view of the exercise on this point.

On the question of 6C2n) A Performance with only one ringer was witnessed by an umpire. It is deliberately not a requirement for a performance containing a new method to meet all the Performance Norms for it to be named. This is because it might prevent the first performance of an innovation in method ringing being recorded, as happened with the first performances of variable cover.

Thanks for this Graham. That sounds sensible. Thank you to the team for their continued hard work on this.
In terms of the norms, to me they fall into 2 categories - the ones that allow innovation in method ringing, which is to be encouraged, and the ones that are there for a good reason eg (c) - having a cup of tea whilst discussing what the next row is going to be.