Ringing Forums

I'm confident that if we took a realistic and sensible approach people wouldn't mind paying a nominal amount to be taught to ring but I don't know how we change the mindset of those in charge.

Isn’t part of the problem that there is no ‘those in charge’. Each tower can do what it wants (provided the church incumbent doesn’t object). Associations or Guilds have no ‘rules’ on this kind of topic but also no aligned guidelines on what they expect towers in their area to do (so no consistency) and the Central Council is equally ambivalent on the subject.
This is why there are no standard expectations for how to learn to ring (including cost) and a variety of schemes which help someone teach someone with an order of techniques to work through.
I agree that ART is becoming the way to learn to teach and has very supportive schemes for new teachers, teaching new learners.
No one is saying that it should be free (just habits) and some people are starting to charge, with a variety of models.
If we all charged for teaching the bell funds would have way too much money in them (Roger Booth recently made the point in the Ringing World that donations always being targeted at restoration / maintenance projects is not helping currently) so if the teachers don’t want the money where does it go?

If paying is supposed to lead to more teaching being available then we would need to recruit people who will teach (and administrate / organise for teaching).
This is the the model at St Clements Cambridge (for example) and it relies on the church involved to be willing to manage the payroll / employer responsibilities. This could be possible in more places but it’s a fairly big ask of the church.
We probably need to give St Clements three years before we could consider approaching each diocese to have one similar set up OR we need ART or the CCCBR to be willing to be the employer and that would be a significant step for either organisation to take.

Would you advocate a national model with one employer for ringing centres / ringing teachers across the country or would you see it working better if a local employer (like the local church) was the employer but with some standard job descriptions, etc which could be prepared as a CCCBR guideline?

Thanks for your comments, with which I entirely agree. You have highlighted how complex a subject it is with the various interlinking elements.
The number of learners in our tower over the last 4 years has not made any appreciable difference to our fund (but we have discussed the implications). To me that’s not the point. It’s to do with quality of teaching and quality teachers. I have found that asking for a donation has been beneficial. It focusses the mind on quality, and financial benefits for the tower. It gives us a more ‘professional’ attitude and awareness of our responsibilities (key word), which is good for ringing in the longer term. Charging or asking for a donation, incentivises the product offering.
IMO there could never be a national model. Ringing is, on the whole, a disorganised melee of peripatetic ringers, loosely affiliated to towers and with freedom to come and go as they wish. Long may it remain so, but we do need to include a different model which is not always FOC, so that we can try to compete with other activities and which might encourage the general public to take ringing a little more seriously!

If we all charged for teaching the bell funds would have way too much money in them — Lucy Chandhial

That assume that the only place money can go is a bell fund. Would the same logic apply to say piano teachers? Would we say they shouldn’t be paid because piano funds don need the money?

Perhaps a portion of any charge could be passed to the PCC for the use of their facilities?

I think that is a separate debate, whether ringers should pay for the use of equipment or whether they should expect it quid pro quo for ringing for services.
But in the context of this discussion that is still paying for bells rather than paying for the provision of services.

Would you advocate a national model with one employer for ringing centres / ringing teachers across the country or would you see it working better if a local employer (like the local church) was the employer but with some standard job descriptions, etc which could be prepared as a CCCBR guideline? — Lucy Chandhial

The Central Council would have to be a very different organisation to be in a position to deliver local services and manage employees at satellite locations. With the move towards using more paid labour, it is slowly heading in the right direction. Delivering some guidelines and resources could probably be done in short order.

Regardless of that, however, I don't think it's right for the Central Council to deliver local services; this is really for local ringers to organise. Do we think we need to set up dedicated organisations for this, or is this something that local associations and guilds could take on?

I think for each local Association to set themselves up to be an employer would be relatively high investment / effort when they are likely, at least at the start, to be employing one or two people only. If the church is already an employer then it’s easier for them to add one person to the payroll. If the CCCBR becomes an employer then it too could scale up. But I agree that the current CCCBR is not set up to offer the service of being the employer for local ringing centres.
The administration and responsibility of becoming an employer is a barrier to changing the model for bellringing because it is generally so locally driven.

The piano teacher quoted above raises a slightly different context of ‘gig economy’ employment or self employed ringing teachers who could earn money direct from students but I wonder whether this could really be practical with insurance, using the church as a venue and using the church ‘equipment’ with H&S risks, safeguarding risks, etc. Even piano teachers presumably have to be careful about inviting students into their home for lessons, perhaps as a group activity bellringing is safer in some areas and riskier in others.