Ringing Forums

It’s not going to be the Central Council that turns things round, it’s going to be the many ringers at grass roots level that will need to do the hard work. The Central Council can provide the central support, but that will only work if the people on the ground take it up. — Roger Booth

I agree. But much of the information that comes out from the CC either never gets to the grass roots or seems to be aimed at elite ringing and is therefore irrelevant to them. PR is pointless unless it targets the right audience and is backed up by resources, which I believe should be potential recruits / early stage ringers.

There is an issue at the moment that many of the experienced ringers ring surprise, but there’s a squeezed middle between plain hunt and surprise, which many people who wish to progress find difficult to cross. In the past there were fewer surprise ringers and there were more opportunities to ring intermediate methods to facilitate progression. — Roger Booth

Exactly. Surprise ringers can ring intermediate methods, the problem is that many of them only want to ring with other Surprise ringers and that's in a rapidly shrinking pool, as you pointed out. Of course people are free to ring with whoever they wish but the results are entirely predictable - I do get a little irked hearing some Surprise ringers bitching about how there are few opportunities to ring at that level nowadays when they've sat on their hands for the last couple of decades and watch it happen.

Not only does the current situation make it difficult / impossible for those who are bloody-minded enough enough to want to keep progressing, it's an insurmountable barrier for those who are capable of making the transition but don't feel motivated enough to put up the necessary fight, which reduces the pool of potential "improvers" even further.

Feedback from those that responded to a questionnaire sent to Ring for King learners was that many of the experienced ringers seemed to prefer to ring with each other, rather than new ringers. However, whilst it is the experienced ringers who hold office at tower, district/branch and guild/association level, it is these new ringers that are the future of ringing. — Roger Booth

That's only going to happen if they feel valued and enfranchised. The view from the trench I'm sat in is that the CCCBR is run for elite ringing, by elite ringers. And many associations are effectively moribund, so salvation is not going to come from that quarter either.

I though the Cast of 1000 idea was a good one, but it didn't appear to make the transition from virtual to real practices and seems to have died a death? The other issue was that it assumed the problem was at the Surprise Major level whereas it's now at least as prevalent at the PB/PH level. My own tower has exactly that challenge at the moment, we are struggling to move on from simple Minimus methods to Minor but we don't have enough people at the right level to do so. We are working on it but there are many other towers in the same situation.

Therefore, perhaps the most important thing that the new PR Workgroup could do is to find ways of reaching grass roots ringers, especially the new ones that have taken up ringing since Covid. In my experience they are often very keen, have useful skills, and would like to help turn things round. Otherwise they will just give up in frustration and put their energies elsewhere! — Roger Booth

Yes, they will, and there's a short window in which to engage them. And if they can't keep making progress, they'll quickly get fed up and put their energies elsewhere anyway.

There are also issues in following up enquiries as so many towers these days so not have active bands. — Roger Booth

Or if they do, the opportunities for progress top out at PH / PB5. That's my concern about the current CCCBR strategy - it seems to be very front-weighted, with far less attention being paid to the much harder problem, making sure the people we attract get good quality training and a satisfying experience. If we can't retain people and get the very best out of them, what's the point?

Yes, and a lot of the current resource with time and skill will have reached the end of its shelf life within the next 5 to 10 years! — Phillip George

We already have a national scheme for teaching ringing teachers, the challenge seems to be to get enough people to do it. In my case, the branch ringing master who taught me got me to help with earlier stage learners as I progressed, thought I had aptitude for it and encouraged me to do the ART course. In addition, my home tower was on its last legs at the time, with only a few elderly ringers, so there was nobody else to teach. I still feel like a bit of an impostor as I'm still learning myself, but I've taught half of our current ringers, so we've gone from a tower that was dying to one that's growing with only a modest amount of outside help.

I rarely tell people outside my own tower that I teach people to start ringing, as in many other contexts I'm the learner, and I can't be bothered justifying why I'm teaching others. I think there needs to be more acceptance that teaching ringing isn't a single thing, and that teaching the basics doesn't require the teacher to be a black zone ringer. I think you are right about the increasing scarcity of people who can teach at an advanced level, putting the additional burden of teaching the basics on them doesn't seem like a good use of their time.

Personally I think the teacher should be paid, but that then opens a hornets nest of insurance, tax, minimum wwage, employee (and not volunteer) status etc. — Nick Elks

We already get paid for weddings, I don't expect the amounts for teaching would be vastly different.

We charged £15 for our "Taster" session, that money went into the tower fund anyway. The point of the charge wasn't to raise money, it was to establish a minimum level of commitment from the attendees.

agreed that the training needs to be good quality, but taking a course to get started in something is common, I don't believe people signing up for ringing courses would expect ringing to be any different. Ringing courses such as the NW one (and others) provide training across a reasonably wide range of skill levels and don't seem to have a problem setting expectations.

Perhaps we need to emphasise this point when ‘signing up’ recruits, and that they have an option to either verbally commit to accepting that there will be an expectation to ‘pay back’ for all the time provided by others to their development — Bob Blanden

We now make it very clear from the start that we expect a commitment to turn up regularly at practices and Sunday mornings. We've turned away one couple who wouldn't do that. In fact it appeared they expected us to adjust practices to suit them.

You sometimes see a ‘flapping board’ fitted to a frame where an outward flying rope could hit another wheel or a bearing housing. We have one. — John Harrison

So do we. The gap between the wall and the wheel on our 7 is less than the diameter of the rope. After it was roped from the other side during the rehang, the rope jumped far enough of the wheel to get jammed between the wall and wheel and stop the bell dead. A board solved that.

Btw i sent John an email a couple of weeks ago asking about progress since I rang his simulator a year ago but not heard so far. — John Harrison

Last time I talked to him he was still working on finishing the full set off, he said he was uprating the back 2 of the 10 to bigger motors. I'll be seeing him and/or Linda in a few weeks, I'll get an update :-)

I wrote something on the subject a few years ago that people might find interesting https://dingdong887180022.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/should-we-charge-for-bell-ringing-lessons/ Things are rarely clear cut. — Mary Jones

Indeed they aren't and there's one very important factor that's completely absent from that article. People are happy to pay for courses because there's a perceived value in them. If something is free, there's a serious risk it won't be valued. We have a promising young ringer who has been completely surpassed by the adults who started at the same time as him, despite the widespread belief that kids always do better than adults. Why? Simple. He doesn't pay for ringing lessons, so if there's a conflict between ringing and an activity that mum & dad have to pay for, guess which one takes priority? As a result we see him only infrequently, and when we do, we spend a lot of time going back over things he's already done.

the speed varies a lot, from zero to quite fast in under half a second, — John Harrison

An interesting aside: I was talking to a friend who has built an incredibly accurate simulator which models the physics of the bell/wheel/rope system, you can even "bounce" off the nonexistent stay, or ring as if you were on the moon (i.e. very slowly!). He told me that during his modelling work he found out why some ropes can "jump wheel". It's because wheel is moving faster than gravity can accelerate the rope downwards, so if the ringer doesn't keep tension on the rope it will "float" off the rim.

Whether charging learners or not it is important that those teaching ringing are 'qualified to do so' in that they have Church of England Safeguarding training (which can be done on-line for free) and of course have a current DBS certificate. — Jane Pridmore

Safeguarding is about protecting those who are vulnerable, only a minority are. Whilst having SG training / DBS is good practice, enthusiastic over-application of "Safeguarding" to situations irrespective of it's appropriate or not is one of the current blights on ringing.

If I charge for ringing teaching and the person doesn't like it or want to continue will I be giving them their money back?' — Jane Pridmore

If you asked a decorator to paint a room and then decided you didn't like the colour you'd chosen, would you expect the decorator to refund what you'd paid them? No, I thought not.

The biggest problem I've seen with ringing training is that some people believe that because they are accomplished ringers themselves, they automatically have the skills to teach others. Yes, many can but there are lots of towers where the TC is teaching people to ring "Because they are the TC" when they are completely unfit to do so.

We are holding a "So you want to learn to ring?" taster session next week, the cost is £15 but if people want to take it up we probably won't to charge them for lessons, The intent of the charge was to filter out those who just want to have a go pulling a bell rope - we already provide that "experience" during our tower open days.

I'm not personally opposed to charging though, we have one young promising learner who's attendance is only intermittent, if there was a monthly up-front charge I'm sure we'd see him more often.

Many ringers who ring by following ropes don’t consciously change speed, they merely make a number of enforced steps, the aggregate effect of which is an approximate speed change, but one that is always a bit behind the curve, and fails as soon as they fail to see the next rope to follow. That might be what happens at the back. — John Harrison

When I started ringing the band struggled to get past back rounds in Plain Hunt. The reason was that the ringers with the worst bell control would only ring the front bells, and they could only ring at two speeds, slow and slower. The rest of the band were completely dependent on bell numbers, so once the front bells got to the back they just festered there with the rest of the band desperately trying to hold up over them. The concepts of in, rounds & out speeds, let alone "at the front" or "at the back" were all a mystery. It can be difficult for experienced ringers to fully appreciate the almost complete lack of situational awareness that afflicts some ringers, they can only ring by bell number and then only if all the bells they are over are in the right place.

Saying the name of a place doesn’t help them to know where it is and how far from it their bell is, nor the action they need to get it their. The counting goes on in one part of their brain, separate from the rest which carries on doing the same unsuccessful actions as before. — John Harrison

This is very true. I can think of the case of one ringer who would insist they were counting places and were therefore in the right place when there was a fire-up. What they were actually doing was counting pulls, pulls that were divorced from the speed the rest of the band were ringing at.

I think a large part of these problems are due to the way ringing is taught, with insufficient emphasis on rhythm and listening. That creates dependence on other people being in the right place visually, whereas what's really needed are the skills to be in the right place in time, independent of others.

A simulator exercise I use is to get people to ring with the moving ringers and highlight ringer turned on, and when they have rung a couple of steady leads, I turn the screen off and tell them to keep going. I don't tell them in advance because they invariably say they won't be able to do it, whereas they almost invariably can. The goal is to show them that they *do* have rhythm and listening skills, but they are being swamped by the emphasis on vision that dominates ringing teaching. A large part of being able to ring by rhythm is having the confidence to actually try it.

We have had many discussions about ringing by vision versus listening/rhythm in our tower. Some of us can see the order of the bells all the time, I can't do that but I can ring Surprise Major on the simulator just by ear. I can't comprehend how they can see all the bells, they can't comprehend how I can ring without seeing them at all. I suspect the top-flight ringers can do both, the rest of us have to do the best we can by emphasising our natural strengths and working on our weaknesses. One of our learners is very sound-dominated and always been able to pick out their bell and could cover well from the start by "Just being the last bong". Another learner will "accurately" clash away forever, because they are ringing just by vision and can't hear their bell. We've adapted out teaching specifically to them, some teaching I've seen seems to be adapted to the proclivities of the teacher rather than she student.

But the common thing they all need to get sorted first is bell control, without that they don't have the skills to get the bell in the right place, even when they know it's not.

Ultimately many ringers fall somewhere in between, motivated to ring well and sometimes try new things but often looking at ringing as a stress reducing (and sometimes primarily social) hobby. — Lucy Chandhial

I originally read that as "stress inducing" :lol:

All good advice. I think the other thing to remember is that if you are motivated enough to take on the responsibility of TC, teaching, helping people progress etc, you are probably at the upper end in terms of motivation and ability. The majority will therefore be less motivated / able than you are, which doesn't mean they aren't interested in progression, just that it's less of a priority for them. And from observing the people I ring with, motivation is not a fixed thing - people can progress fairly quickly and then appear to plateau. That can be for a number of reasons - wanting to just enjoy where they are at, wanting to consolidate skills, or other things happening in their lives. But a few months later they may be champing at the bit again, and wanting to drive forwards. You just have to accept and adapt to that.

well, some of the practices I've been to have been a right performance :razz:

The public won't necessarily know which are practices and which are performances, but despite what many ringers tell themselves, the public absolutely can tell the difference between good and bad ringing.

I agree with everything @John Harrison has said in his last 2 posts, I think his warning about not letting "fun" slide into "anything goes" also needs to be heeded. I was at a practice recently where there was the most appalling crashing about, even in rounds, and serious handling faults were going undressed. At the end of each cacophony the leader's response was "Well done!", which it absolutely wasn't. When there was a suggestion that we ring PH8 one of the senior ringers there quite rightly put her foot firmly down, "If you can't ring it on 6, you shouldn't be attempting it on 8". As they wryly remarked to me afterwards, "Clearly public relations isn't a concern for them". They seemed to either forgotten, or just not cared, that even our practices are public performances.

How does a band decide where on the continuum it lies? Does a consensus develop? What role should the Tower Captain play in this? ... I feel that this is some leadership test that I have failed, so what I am really asking is "what is that test and what do I do in order to pass it?" — Barbara Le Gallez

If you think being TC requires passing some sort of leadership test then I think you've misinterpreted the role. Being TC does not empower you to decide for others what their targets and level of effort are, if you try they'll probably just leave. You can provide opportunities, encourage and support, and that's it.

You seem to be viewing the situation as if it's static, it isn't. Just because someone is keen now it doesn't follow they will remain so, just because someone shows initial promise it doesn't mean it will come to fruition. And the opposite of both those is true as well.

It sounds to me like you are putting a lot of responsibility and stress on yourself, I don't think that's a good idea, either for you, or the band. I think you need focus on your and the band's enjoyment of ringing, the rest may well follow. It's hobby, not a job.

I have watched many (older) people struggle to progress beyond plain hunt and I believe that we expect them to pick up a myriad of micro-skills by magic, much faster than they possibly can.
The danger is we may over-focus on ropesight and memorising the circle of work, when the missing micro-skills are mostly around bell handling. The plain hunt they have "mastered" is actually badly struck. They are not yet ready for bob doubles! — Rosalind Martin

The most important thing a teacher can do is to try to determine through observation what the deficient micro skills are, and then work with the pupil to try to find ways to strengthen them. — John Harrison

As an older starter, I can confirm you are both absolutely right, both in terms of the problems and how best to address them. I was led to believe that ropesight was some sort of magical gift I needed to be granted in order to progress any further - I nearly gave up as a result. But as my bell control and striking improved, so did my ropesight - which bell I was after became "obvious" as I was already in the right place anyway - a virtuous circle.

The step up from CCs to PH is big, I think it's an even bigger jump to methods, that was my experience and those I teach say the same thing. I think you are both spot on about micro skills, the best way of helping with that is micro feedback. Adults in particular seem to do best with feedback that's Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Achievable (SMART) but in ringing it often consists of "Your dodges/leading/whatever are still wrong, we'll try again next week". It can be difficult to give that level of help that's needed during normal practices and it requires a lot from the teacher. Plus, like sports, being a top-rank player doesn't always translate into being a top-rank coach, it's a scarce skill.

I think the other thing is that acquiring these skills is a process that never stops. When I moved from 6 to 8 bells, I had to improve my ropesight and striking which took time & effort, now I've I started on Bristol after Cambridge, my striking needs more work.

yes, and you can use the striking monitor to show them exactly where any wobbles are, for example slowing down between 2nds place and the lead when hunting in, rather than "pushing on in" seems to be common.

A possible solution to Barbara's problem might be to have a month in which no "teaching" is carried out with the individual but in which she participates in ringing that is chosen to allow her to utilise such skills as she has already acquired in a lower-stress manner — Mike Shelley

I run weekly simulator sessions and as far as possible I make them participant led. It's a low pressure environment and if they want to spend half an hour practicing the same thing over and over, that's fine. And people's first attempts at PH are done that way as well.

It’s worse than that, they are often told to look at the bell they are following (or the one they are about to follow, though how they know which one without learning the numbers isn’t explained). — John Harrison

Yes, that was certainly my experience :lol: I remember being complemeted on how much my ropesight had improved, after I stopped laughing I said it was my notsight that had improved, not my ropesight - I'd become better at filtering out bells I couldn't possibly be after, which reduced the number down to something my limited ropesight could cope with. Part of that was doing as you say, other things that helped were taking advantage of method structure and concentrating only on the bells moving slowest relative to you.