Ringing Forums

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 — Lucy Chandhial

We can't keep on doing what we have always done. The ringing population has decreased from an estimated 42,000 in 1988 to around 30,000 today. Unless we recruit, train and retain much faster than we have been doing over the past three decades, and at scale, the ringing population will continue to decline

We need to recruit and teach smarter, and we do need to charge for tuition to enable us to do this. Most new ringers expect to pay something. However, I hear the same reasons trotted out by many of the more experienced ringers about why it is difficult to change. The Birmingham School of Bellringing has been running successfully for over a decade and charges £5 per pupil for a 2 hour Saturday morning lesson. The Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre has been running for over 5 years and also charges. Talking to the Cambridge Youths yesterday, it seems that the St Clements centre is experiencing a huge demand from new ringers in Cambridgeshire who cannot get the tuition and support that they need from their local band. The St Clements Centre charges £5 per hour per pupil for each group session, and £10 per hour for 1:1 tuition.

Perhaps the debate needs to change from being about why we are not able to do things like this, to be about why so many other groups are not doing things like this already, showing them what is possible and is working elsewhere, and helping them undertake similar projects.

Overcoming inertia requires brave leadership and decision making plus increased resource. More volunteers, doing more and being better directed is necessary but not sufficient. Funds need to be spent, albeit as wisely as possible. To be sustainable that means increased income. — Paul Wotton

I think that the CCCBR is approaching this from entirely the wrong direction. The CCCBR itself cannot do much on the ground. It is motivated local groups of ringers that will have an impact, and the case for doing something to safeguard the future of ringing in each local area is compelling, in a way that increasing affiliation fees to the CCCBR is not. Today I took the Charmborough Ring to the Society of Cambridge Youths who are hiring it for the Cambridge Folk Festival. They have an excellent system in place to capture the contact details and follow up people who show interest. They also have an excellent teaching centre at St Clements, which is staffed by a part time administrator/teacher in Lynn Hughes. The £245k to set up the teaching centre and employ Lynn for the first two years was raised by the Society of Cambridge Youths.

There are other similar models such as the Birmingham School of Bell Ringing and the Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre, so I am not advocating one particular model. However I would prefer to see the CCCBR focussing on encouraging many other local groups of ringers to set up their own initiatives, and to share good practice. We need several dozen of these initiatives spread round the country. The £40k that the CCCBR are currently agonising over is just a drop in the ocean of what is needed for Ringing 2030 to be successful, and will not in itself achieve very much. However, groups such as the Cambridge Youths have shown that they can raise large capital sums of money, and these projects can be self financing so that they can employ their own admin/teaching staff, in addition to volunteers, and hire mobile belfries too!.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/YLpwoUzBSSikjv2M/

To meet the wide ambition of Ringing2030, the CCCBR could project-manage the course design and aim for a hundred courses per Autumn-term for each of the three years leading to 2030. That would be worth paying an new employed project-manager to do .. — PeterScott

Oh no, more deja-vu. ART have already designed various teacher training courses. This includes producing modern accompanying textbooks and on-line material to help new teachers learn to teach well, and to help their students to learn to ring. ART employs three part time staff to deliver its modules and coordinate its volunteers at a national level, and there are over 40 ART teaching hubs across the UK and overseas teaching ringers, plus many hundreds of individual teachers using the Learning the Ropes scheme. The Mancroft and Cambridge Hubs each also employ a part time member of staff. ART is also delivering around 60 of its teacher training courses each year, attended by over 450 delegates. Therefore I don't see why we should not build on this success, rather than start afresh. It's all self financing too!

The elephant in the room is that there are some out there who are resistant to change, or are unaware of what has been achieved elsewhere, and this is slowing down progress. We have been aware of the current issues facing the exercise for well over three decades. We know what the solutions are, such as group teaching and paid tuition, as they have been discussed many times before, but we keep going round in circles. Just look at the Ringing Centres Committee (1992) Founders Grants and Founders Awards scheme (1994) Education Committee's proposed Instructors Guild (1997) Ringing Trends working group (2000) Network for Ringing Training (2001) Ringing Trends Committee (2004) Ringing Foundation (2007) ITTS and ART (2009) Wellesbourne Conference (2011) Change Ringing for the Future and Regional Forums (2012) CRAG (2016). Ringing 2030 needs to overcome this inertia in order to move forward, and do this in sufficient time so that fewer bands fall below critical mass.

What is needed to progress Ringing 2030 on a volunteer basis are volunteers with the capability, creativity, commitment and capacity to deliver it. Ringers with even three of these characteristics are rare, those with all four vanishingly so. Of these rare people, those of working age are in demand in the workplace, may have the great responsibility of raising children and are struggling to keep up their continuous professional development. They may even be trying to do some ringing. Those that that are retired can struggle with capacity, I know I do. We need to nurture our volunteers, too many of whom are doing too many volunteer roles in ringing to do all of them as well as they would like. — Paul Wotton

Oh dear, if that is true then we are all doomed. It all sounds very depressing.

However, in my experience there are a lot of newer ringers out there with all sorts of useful skills who would be willing to help, if only there was a way of reaching them, before they get ground down by the existing system. Perhaps some articles in Tower Talk would be a start.

I also went along to the RWNYC in London on Saturday and what an excellent day that was. It was great to see well over 300 young ringers participating, plus all their reserves and adult supporters. The ASCY are to be congratulated on the vast amount of imagination and time that they put in to organising the event. It was also great to see all the positive postings on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram during and after the event. The Cornish Campanologist’s postings on TikTok were excellent.

Perhaps there are some lessons here too, where so many people not just in London, but also so many Guilds and Associations up and down the country must have put a vast amount of time and effort beforehand into volunteering and doing something so motivational for the young ringers, and to help safeguard the future of ringing. There were also all the organisations that were willing to sponsor and support the event financially. A Ringing 2030 stand at next year’s contest too, perhaps.

It would also help if offers of help were taken up. Late last year I did offer to help the V&L group with aspects of their work which overlap with my current commitments. I have heard nothing since.

“If you want something done, ask a busy person” Benjamin Franklin

but not all districts have good resources. I would like to see ndividual towers take the initiative too but most are not yet aware of Ringing 2030, — Phillip George

Quite right. I can think of examples where this is the case. Once places have fallen below critical mass, it's far harder to resurrect them, and we're not going to be able to help all of them. Some places will need to remain fallow. Best to concentrate first of those which have not yet fallen below critical mass and reinforce them, then spread outwards.

Evidence that it is being consider can be found in the CCCBR Ringing 2030 Recruitment and Development workplan (See the Reports section at https://cccbr.org.uk/about/workgroups/volunteer-and-leadership/) which contains a number of tasks that relate to liaison/working with ART. — Paul Wotton

It’s on my to do list — Lucy Chandhial

I think the working relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART could be more clearly defined — Lucy Chandhial

I was a member of the Central Council from 1981 and served on several of its committees. I know that little happened between committee meetings, and how easy it was to produce annual reports that implied that something had/was being done. Therefore, please excuse my scepticism. As a result, since 2014, like others, I have put my energies into ART and the Mobile Belfies Trust in order to make things happen.

Whilst on the ‘to do list’, I wonder whether any substantive discussions have actually taken place so far with ART. The fact that one of the workgroup team leaders is not clear about the relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART seems to illustrate my point.

Also, looking at the two documents in the link that you have provided, I find that the Mission and Activity Paper was written in June 2022. I was amused that included a quote from Boris Johnson, but like so much else, things have moved on a lot in the last two years!

The spreadsheet programme seems a little more up to date, but it also seems to be a wish list. The 2024-6 section seems too complicated and out of touch with reality. For example, one activity is to review how Ring For the King (RFTK) campaign matched enquiries with teachers and this review is to take place next year in Q3 2025. However, ART has already done this, and the results are quite interesting. I am sure that ART would share this with you, if asked.

The report and programmes all seem top-down. A bottom-up approach would be far better. Neither the CCCBR or ART can do the work needed at a local level to safeguard ringing. It the ringers a grass roots level in local towers, Districts and Branches that need to do the work. However, in my own Guild nether the Management Committee or the AGM have discussed Ringing 2030. Nor does it feature in newsletters or social media. I suspect it is much the same in many other Guilds and Associations, and Districts and Branches. Without their ‘buy in’ any request for additional central funding or to do anything substantial is going to fall on deaf ears.

I would therefore focus on building up support for Ringing 2030 from the grass roots. Rather than proceed everywhere at once, there is a need for some pilot areas which can show what can be done. There are already successful models to build on, such as Worcester, the Birmingham School of Bellringing, the Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre, St Clement’s Cambridge, and the Barnes and Darlington teaching hubs etc.

It is the Guilds and Associations and their Districts and Branches that have the financial and manpower resources to support many more local initiatives like these. They need to be asked what their plans are for Ringing 2030, and what support they actually need. I know that many of the new ringers that have learnt in the last two years get it, but invariably they are not the ones holding office.

there's an unfilled gap above Level 5 of the Learning the Ropes scheme, which only goes to a level that's just above PB5/6. ART doesn't appear to offer anything for people who want to progress from there to intermediate / advanced method ringing. — John de Overa

You need to think of progression as a pyramid. You need a lot of people at the base to support and feed through to the higher levels. When IITS was first put together it was thought that it would be relatively simple to show new and inexperienced teachers ways of teaching people how to ring Plain Bob and Grandsire Doubles and Plain Bob Minor inside. Hence the original Module 2 course. However, it soon became apparent that a lot of the teachers who wanted to come on these modules couldn't ring one or more of these methods inside themselves, so they wouldn't be able to teach others to do it. Hence Module 2 was split into Module 2F to teach foundation skills. This shows them ways to teach the bell control and the listening skills needed to be able to plain hunt a bell. Module 2C was then about ways to teach people who could plain hunt to ring the treble by ropesight and then ring the three methods inside.

Originally it was also thought that once people could ring these three methods, they could then be responsible for their own progression. However, more recently it has been realised that not only is the teaching of the foundation skills an issue, but many local bands might not be able to progress beyond call-changes. Hence the Learning the Ropes call changes scheme has been introduced.

If you consider Simon Linford's four zones about 50% of ringers are in the Green Zone (up to plain hunt Module 2F/LtR2). A further 40% are in the Blue Zone with methods up to Kent TB Minor inside; then 7% in the Red Zone ringing Cambridge Surprise Minor inside and above, and the remaining 3% in the Black Zone - Bristol Surprise Maximus and above.

I see so many District/Branch practices advertised at the top end of the Blue Zone and into the Red Zone, but there may be just one or two training days aimed at the Green Zone and lower Blue Zone ringers each year. No wonder they are not very engaged. As a helper on the NW Ringing course for the past two years the demand for places at the elementary level was three times the supply, whereas at the intermediate and more advanced levels demand was at or just below the supply. I suspect the same is true of the other long weekend courses. As a helper and group leader on many training days over the last 20 years it has been disappointing to see the same students come back a year later with the same handling faults etc. There has also always been a shortage of helpers.

This is where the investment by the Central Council and Guilds and Associations is needed, in new approaches, and to welcome fresh and innovative ideas.

You will also be welcome to hear that ART has discussed developing more advanced teacher training modules, and has built provision for them into its new release of SmART Ringer. At this year's Annual Conference ART also partnered with the Ancient Society of College Youths and the Society of Royal Cumberland Youths to put on a choice of workshops for teachers on the Sunday, for conducting and ringing more advanced methods on 6, 8, 10 and 12 bells.

More reasons why we need to learn from the experience of the last 15 years, and build on them.

I think the working relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART could be more clearly defined — Lucy Chandhial

That's quite simple to define. ART (formerly ITTS) was established as part of a Central Council imitative in 2007 to bring in external funding to the exercise. It was soon realised that we could not make the case to external funders till there was a training scheme in place - Learning the Ropes for new ringers and what became the ART Modules to train teachers and deliver Learning the Ropes. So the Council invested £10,000 in this in 2009. Many of those involved at the time were previous/current members of the CCCBR Education and Ringing Centres Committees.

Therefore ART is about training new teachers and improving the standards of teaching. It has never been about compelling exiting teachers to become members, However, it has always welcomed their input as 'mentors' to train new teachers and to teach alongside ART members in the ART Teaching Hubs. Even ART's own learn to ring enquires are forwarded to non members when there is no ART member nearby.

However, ART's role is not the promotion of ringing at a strategic level. That's a role for the CCCBR, which can undertake work such as engaging external consultants to design a new branding, design websites, and produce attractive leaflets and marketing collateral. The CCCBR is there to liaise with other external bodies at national level such as the C. of E, the insurers, the Scout Association and the DofE Awards scheme. It can liaise with the national media and support the use of mobile belfies at public events. It can also carry out national surveys on the state of ringing, the number of teachers and their skills, and the numbers of new recruits and retention rates, to help guide future policy. The Council does not need to devise its own separate scheme for the training of teachers and leaders, set up a new system for forwarding enquires, establish its own teaching hubs, or necessarily produce its own up to date teaching and learning material.

The delivery of recruitment and training of new ringers is carried out by ringers in their local towers, and through their local Guilds and Associations and their Districts and Branches. The Council and its workgroups can therefore provide guidance on good practice, including case studies, and encourage those who wish to learn to teach or improve their teaching skills to attend and ART Module, and promote wider use of the Learning the Ropes scheme.

The CCCBR can also provide guidance on finance and investment. Half a century ago the CCCBR Bell Restoration Funds Committee encouraged Guilds and Associations to set up BRF's and register them as charities, as so many rings of bells were then in a poor condition. It carried out a triennial survey, encouraging societies to spend money and not build up large reserves. It encouraged societies to register the whole Guild/Association as a charity as there were other benefits including more flexibility. it also encouraged societies to solicit bequests. This work by the CCCBR has been very successful.

As a result, today the situation is totally different. We have a looming shortage of ringers, and many rings of bells are in good condition. Taken together, nationally Guilds and Associations are now sitting on a large cash pile. If just 20% was invested in people projects in their areas, through the CCCBR now encouraging them to establish training and development funds, it would go a long way. Like the parable of the feeding of the 5,000 I am sure that much more money would then come flooding in if grass roots ringers saw each grant invested in the future of ringing at a number if towers, rather than it being eroded by inflation for over a decade, and then spent on one project, especially those where the parish might not be large enough to support a local band, or where the church might be at risk of closure a decade later.

Please can someone explain (i) where the figure of £11,650 in the cashflow forecast model to set up a recruitment portal comes from? and (ii) why it appears that it will take two years to become operational, when a further £66,600 will then be spent on forwarding on enquires to teachers?

Am I the only one suffering from Deja-vu here? Over a quarter of a century ago the Central Council and its Education, Ringing Centres and Ringing Trends committees spent a lot of time discussing the demographic time bomb and the need to improve the teaching of ringing. In an action reminiscent of the then attitude by some to climate change, in 1999 at Lincoln the CCCBR agreed not to proceed further until the “…Instructors Guild is fully established nationally and is working well”. Roll on a decade and in 2009 the CCCBR agreed to invest £10,000 in a Ringing Foundation project known then as ITTS, which later became ART.

Now, fifteen years later, ART is fully established internationally and is working very well. It is self-financing and currently employs three part-time paid staff. ART has developed the Learning the Ropes scheme, with an attractive website aimed at new ringers and teachers, and published a complimentary and attractive suite of publications, with modern colour graphics, aimed at new ringers and their teachers. It is also working hard to launch a new on-line learning portal this autumn.

As part of their duties, ART’s paid admin staff triage learn-to-ring enquires that come through its website and forward them on to an active teacher who lives close by, whether this is an ART member or another known teacher, who is not an ART member. They are also able to survey and monitor the progress of these enquiries. Therefore, by CCCBR and ART working together, making the process more transparent and allowing non-ART members who meet a basic minimum standard (not necessarily those needed to become a full ART member) to be added to the wider list already operated by ART, it should not take very long for any new recruitment portal to become operational. This would be a win-win for both organisations.

Therefore, I hope that CCCBR is not proposing to increase affiliation fees in order to re-invent the wheel, and replicate what ART is already doing successfully. Surely there is a need to learn from all the discussions that have previously taken place and build on all the work that has been done by past and present CCCBR members over at least the last quarter of a century. The CCCBR shop still sells publications for teachers and learners that were written up to half a century before ART and Learning the Ropes. Perhaps now is the time to acknowledge that ART and Learning the Ropes are the mainstream, and finally move forward. This will then free up CCCBR to focus resources on those other things that can only be done centrally.

Simulators seem like a perfect fit for spending some of the cash mountains many BRFs are sitting on as they are an obvious "ringing infrastructure" item. — John de Overa

But we also need to invest some of that money in training people how to use them. So often I see people just using simulators as a form of sound control, rather than as a teaching tool like you are.

I also see people making the case for dumb bells in towers where it relatively easy to pop upstairs and silence a bell, so the dumb bell may just be there as a status symbol. However, spreading good teaching practice is what we should focus our resources on.

That's just the sort of evidence I think the CCCBR needs to justify having more financial muscle. — Paul Wotton

Another piece of evidence is that in 2007 the CCCBR established the Ringing Foundation. In 2009 it awarded the Ringing Foundation £10k to establish the Integrated Teacher Training Scheme (which subsequently became ART). Like two of the three servants, by 2015 the Ringing Foundation had levered in significant additional resources from a variety of other sources to enable it to fund the setting up of ART to the tune of £43k.

Today ART is not only financially self sufficient, arguably far more so than the CCCBR. It currently employs three part-time paid staff to assist its volunteers in delivering its activities. It also ploughs surplus money back into the grass roots through its awards scheme and it is also supporting university societies with grants to recruit new ringers at freshers fairs, and to train other students to teach them. In each of the last two years it has delivered over 50 one-day teacher training modules, attended by over 300 teachers each year, helping to grow the pool of teachers. There is a growing pool of ART Hubs promoting ringing and training new ringers, including the flagship ones at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich and St Clements in Cambridge. ART has also developed the Learning the Ropes scheme, with an attractive website aimed at new ringers, and published a complimentary and attractive suite of publications, with modern colour graphics, aimed at new ringers and their teachers, In all, a remarkable return on £10k.

If the CCCBR wishes to, it could build on its past investment and enable ART to do far more. Looking back to what was said in 2007, much of what was suggested then still applies today, and still needs addressing, and without ART things would be even worse now.

we should try hard to obtain lottery funding for training the ringers in England (similar schemes may apply in Wales & Scotland?) — Ken Webb

ART started looking at this about ten years ago with a professional fund-raiser, and we subsequently worked on an application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund on behalf of ART and the CCCBR to do precisely what you suggest. The feedback from the Lottery was that we cannot expect NLHF to contribute 100% . We would need to show our commitment by putting some of our own resources in first. Also, we wouldn't be able to go straight to a Nationwide scheme. We would need to run local pilots first, to demonstrate that what we were proposing works.

We haven't really progressed this much over the last two years for a variety of reasons, but it is still in the Ringing2030 project list. However. I live close to Ropley where the church was gutted by fire ten years ago. Even though the church was insured, the PCC wanted to provide toilets and a kitchen and have a modern building that could be used by the local community seven days a week. The bells were not seen as a priority.

Fortunately I have been able to use a lot of the NLHF application material that I helped draft for ART/CCCBR in an application to put the bells back at Ropley. A grant for £62k was awarded last November. However the application was about far more than just putting the bells back; it was also about recruiting and training up a new group of ringers (four are coming to tonight's intensive handling lesson at Old Alresford in our local ART Hub), holding regular open days, giving talks to community groups, working with the local History Society to deliver a 'history detectives' project with local schoolchildren, delivering handbelll tune ringing workshops, running an after school handbelll club, delivering ART teacher training Modules and steeple-keeping workshops to ringers from the wider area, working with the Winchester Photographic Society to record the project and to mount an exhibition (not just the rehanging but also all the 'soft' activities as well), etc.

NHLF's mandatory requirement is to 'engage new audiences with heritage' and it's all the soft stuff that that helped us tick the boxes. The rebuilt church is also a wonderful space and is now used for all sorts of activities throughout the week. Unlike many village churches, it now has a growing worshipping community. The emphasis on bringing new people in, whether to worship or not, and especially on working with young people and their families, not only results in enthusiastic support from the Vicar, Churchwardens and PCC, but also the other clergy in our ART Hub. The staff in the Winchester Diocesan Office are also very interested too, and they want us to talk to other parishes in the Winchester Diocese.

it is hard now to show that extra expenditure would achieve this. — Paul Wotton

I disagree. Today the Touring Tower is at Hurst Show in Berkshire and the Charmborough Ring is at Billingshurst Show in Sussex. All three mobile belfries will be used at about 30 events this year, and seen by hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of people at each event. We can show that when followed up effectively, they are not only an excellent PR tool, but also a good way of recruiting new ringers.

The CCCBR launched a crowd funding campaign in 2022 for £30,000 towards the Touring Tower. To date only £20,953 has been raised. However because of delays, costs have increased, so nearer £35,000 is now needed. Fortunately the Charmborough Trust had about £9,000 in its reserves, and this enabled the Touring Tower to become operational. However this has not only depleted the Trust's reserves, but there is still a significant shortfall. Therefore some items of expenditure have needed to be delayed. We had hoped that by now we could have some smart new promotional material to accompany the Touring Tower and the other two mobile belfries, to take advantage of the members of the public that we are now able to reach. However, that is another story.

We would like to be able to do far more, whether that is through the Central Council helping with our capital costs, branding, the design of attractive PR collateral and supporting an effective recruitment portal; and Guilds and Associations contributing through their training and development funds.to the hire of the mobile belfries for fetes and shows, and taking them into schools for activities days.

A charity with purposes democratically agreed by its affiliated society/association members ( — Paul Wotton

The problem is that 9/10 of ringers are not engaged with their local Guild/Association, let alone the Central Council. What would be interesting is to put the question direct to the wider membership, asking them if they had £375k available, what would they spend it on?

The Essex Association did precisely that in 2022 and the results are quite interesting. They came up with some very good ideas - https://eacr.org.uk/about/bequests.html

The only problem that I see is that even when the money is available, getting people to apply for grants is not easy as there is no tradition of spending on the recruitment and training ringers. It's all done in an amateurish way, on a shoestring, and there is fierce resistance to doing anything different. This was the problem experienced by the CCCBR's Ringing Centres Committee with a large pot of money provided by the Founders Livery Company in the 1990's, and also the Ringing Foundation when it was set up about fifteen years ago.

A lot of this will probably rely on local Associations and Guilds (or alternative local structures) to make it possible so it is questionable whether increased funding for central organisation is the key to delivering the support most ringers want locally. — Lucy Chandhial

I think that the wrong question is being asked. It should not be about affiliation fees; instead it should be about how should Ringing2030 be funded?

Proposals to raise affiliation fees have been discussed more than once in the past and met fierce resistance. Over the last 40 – 50 years Guilds and Associations have focussed putting most of their resources into restoring and augmenting rings of bells. There are now far less unringable towers. However, they continue to do this.

The Charity Commission publish the previous five years income and expenditure figures for every charity on their website. Whilst I was a Director and the Ringing Foundation and researching this, I started keeping a spreadsheet to analyse Guild and Associations and their BRF’s, and still do. There is currently about £6million held in BRF’s, and annual grant expenditure has remained relatively static at about £250k each year for the past ten years.

However, income was also static at about £300k per annum over the same period, so the amount held is growing. Whist some money needs to be kept to fund grants promised, there is sufficient to fund well over 10 years’ worth of projects, without any more income coming in. Much of the remainder, whilst unallocated, is also kept in short term deposit accounts. The most notable exception is the Oxford Diocesan Guild. They have a well-managed fund and invest the surplus for the long-term with professional investment advice provided by the Diocesan Office.

As so many ringers are pensioners, or near retirement age, it’s surprising that so many Guilds and Associations are not so financially aware.

In addition to the steady income of about £300k pr annum, it is also apparent that some Guilds and Associations receive large windfalls from time to time through bequests, but that is perhaps the subject for another posting.

Charity Commission guidance is that charities should keep their levels of reserves under review. They are advised not to hold large reserves, but to spend the money on their charitable objectives. Many BRF’s have very narrow objectives and only contribute to bells, frames and fittings. However, the guidance is also that charities should review their objectives from time to time, as circumstances change.

In summary, we shouldn’t be worried about £40k per annum in six years’ time. That figure is far too timid anyway. We have the resources in the exercise to do far more, and to do it straight away. It should also have been done yesterday, if not a decade or two ago!

People bandy the term insurance around without thinking what it covers. — John Harrison

People need to think of it in terms of risk and ownership of that risk. For example:

• Someone falls down the tower steps because they are worn and the handrail is inadequate. The PCC has a duty of care to people coming into the building, even trespassers, to ensure that it safe. Therefore they should hold both Public Liability and Employers Liability Insurance to cover the risk to their staff and to any visitors.
  
• Someone is electrocuted by a faulty appliance or wiring - ditto
  
• The steeple-keeper injures themselves because they have not been provided with adequate training, and/or tools or PPE. Even if they are a volunteer, the Employer (the PCC) has duties to provide a safe system of work etc. under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
  

Most of the risks in a bellringing situation are therefore likely to fall on the PCC, and they normally hold £5 or £10 million cover for this. Guilds and Associations are only insuring themselves for incidents which occur at Guild/Association/District/Branch meetings and practices and training events. Even then the incident may not be their fault (e.g. the worn steps). Nor can the Guild or Association be held responsible for ringing at individual tower practices, or on Sundays as that is down to the PCC. (if they were responsible, they would need to a lot of work to assess the risks in every tower, and address them).

Some Guilds and Associations do hold Personal Accident Insurance for their members, and this applies no matter whose fault this is, but this cover is expensive and the level of cover is low. The old and young are not likely to be covered. Typically the relatives might get £10k or £20k if someone dies. However imagine that you are the breadwinner in a young family with a mortgage to pay, and you become permanently disabled, with the need adaptations to your home and for ongoing care with a live in carer. £5 to £10 million is more like the amount of money that you would need.

The advice ought to be that you should take out your own personal accident cover in the light of your personal circumstances, and not rely on a payout from the Guild or Association. Many people will have some personal accident insurance, perhaps even as part of their own household policy, or another benefit, and they will only be able to claim against one policy for the same incident. Claiming against multiple policies is fraud!

Posters, flyers and adverts are all very well, but I am not surprised at the response. In my experience you really need to get in front of people and talk to them. Before you embark on any recruitment campaign you also need think carefully about they type of people that you need, how many, and how you are going to train them.

The Association of Ringing Teachers publishes some excellent recruitment and retention advice at https://ringingteachers.org/index.php?cID=625,

There is also a link there to a recruitment toolbox containing a ten point plan developed by the CCCBR Volunteer and Leadership Workgroup. The case studies from the ART Awards are also worth looking at for useful ideas on what has worked well elsewhere.

Many ringers seem to confuse raising awareness of ringing with recruitment. Raising awareness of ringing through open days, talks to local community groups and regular posts in local social media can help in generating a steady flow of enquiries. It is also important to follow up all enquiries personally and promptly (the same day) and be ready to offer people an intensive course of handling lessons, so that they are ringing rounds in a few weeks.

Advertising a course of lessons and getting people up to speed quickly has helped us regenerate two local bands round here recently, with a retention rate of around 66% a year later. It might take more effort in the short term, but it saves an awful lot of wasted time and effort in the long term.

Mobile belfries and portable mini rings at local fetes and shows are also an excellent way of engaging with non-ringers. Event organisers will often pay for you to come along as an attraction, or your Guild or Association may be able to help with the cost https://www.mobilebelfries.org/

go for Cambridge Major. It's honestly not particularly difficult. if you can treble bob you can ring Cambridge. Go for it ! — Barbara Le Gallez

I totally disagree. I had the fortune of learning the standard eight during my student days, when I was able to ring the methods regularly each week, besides being invited to ring in quite a few quarter peal and peal attempts to help consolidate this. A half course of Cambridge Major lasts about four and half minutes, a full course lasts just over seven. It is almost impossible to learn anything if all you are going to do is ring it for a few minutes each month.

I think that the rush to Cambridge is a symptom of the current problems in the exercise. Many of the people who can ring it leant it a long time ago. To them it is easy, but they might now be one or two short to ring it. Hence the pressure on the newer ringers to learn Cambridge early on. A more sustainable approach would be to do it the hard way and develop a band that ring together regularly each week and help them work up to it by learning some simpler methods first.

The struggle appears to be that many ringers are happy to ring, enjoy ringing, will turn up for practices, outings, peals, etc but are not willing to put any time into organisation of ringing (ranging from bell maintenance to finances, calendars, publicity of events through to teaching future ringers). — Lucy Chandhial

I don't understand the desire to prop up the current associations, most of which aren't fit for purpose any longer. — John de Overa

I think that the problem is that many societies and their Districts and Branches are continuing to do what they have always done (at least in living memory). Those in charge dislike change, and this is what needs to be tackled. I can't see that paying people is a sustainable solution.

We recruited a large group of new ringers at one of my local towers 15 months ago, and the new ringers were sufficiently enthusiastic to help raise £2,000 over the space of about three months to redecorate the ringing room, upgrade the lighting and lay a new carpet. They also did all the painting. Whilst the local District helped towards the cost, the Society BRF was unwilling to contribute towards this work as it was not 'Bell Restoration'.

It may be what we have done for the past 50 years, but nowadays when we have far more bells than we have ringers to ring them, why are we spending large sums on augmentations, and on rehanging bells in church towers which may close or have just a few services a year in a decade's time? Each of the new ringers were more than willing to contribute significant sums towards the work as they could see the point. However giving money to the BRF when it already has enough funds in reserve to pay the next 10 years worth of grants appears less worthwhile.

We also had a successful District improvers outing on Friday to four towers for about 20 of our new ringers and their helpers. One of the new ringers organised it. We also have a thriving District ringing school holding several sessions each month. People have come forward to help with the organisation, and even learn more about teaching. Just under 60 ringers subscribe to our District Spond app. However, although it is a 'District' group we seem to have three distinct groups of ringers out of the 240 members of our District:

• The stalwarts who attend business meetings and striking competitions, and who seem to come for the tea and chat, not necessarily the ringing any more. The majority don't mix with the improvers, nor have they joined our Spond group, which is a worry as decisions are taken and officers are elected at business meetings.
• The enthusiastic improvers, who do not see much point in attending business meetings, but who are keen to take part in other ringing activities, and are prepared to organise them too!
• Those members who generally never ring outside their own tower. They don't participate in District activities and haven't joined the Spond group either.

In business you need to follow the market, and in ringing that is what we need to do.

so it seems fruitless to look to these funds — Stuart Palin

OK, so any money donated for a specified purpose must be used for that purpose, but the trustees of all charities also have a duty to carry out regular governance reviews. The also have a duty to periodically review the objects of their charity and keep them up to date, and not to accumulate large financial reserves. It would be improper to start from the viewpoint of seeing these as fruitless exercises.

The Charity Commission publish the annual income and expenditure figures of all charities on their website and since my time on the Ringing Foundation I have monitored the details of all ringing charities. Of the 31 BRF’s that are registered charities, the level of grant expenditure has remained relatively static at around £250k per annum since 2009. Income has also remained static at around £300k per annum, although large bequests increase this figure substantially in certain years.

These BRF’s are therefore accumulating reserves faster than they are spending them, and as a whole I estimate that they hold enough in reserve to fund the next ten years grants, without more income coming in. Given that Guilds and Associations divert a percentage or fixed amount of their subscriptions into their BRF’s, they could consider pausing this for a while and perhaps diverting this money into training and development, and other benefits for their members.

They could also consider giving larger BRF grants, although they will need to be careful not to spend these resources on projects where the bells are unlikely to be rung regularly, or the church is at risk of being closed in the longer term. Many of our belfries are dilapidated and unwelcoming, so instead of confining grants to rehanging and augmentation, consideration could be given to grants to redecorating ringing rooms and renewing lighting and electrics, and improvements to help with training such as dumb-bells and simulators. With an ageing population of steeple-keepers, and some towers without someone to look after the bells, how about subsidising periodic maintenance visits by a bell-hanger?

There is also a case to consider registering the whole Guild/Association as a charity, as 12 societies have already done, in order to facilitate greater flexibility.