Surrey Association MemberMojo example I've come across many grass roots ringers who are on the verge of giving up because the support that they receive is so backward. Only about 50% of ringers have ever got as far as ringing a quarter peal. Only about 12,000 ringers rang one or more quarter peals last year (Coronation year) out of an estimated 30,000 ringers. — Roger Booth
As a grass roots ringer at a tower that for longer than living memory was just CCs and shaky PH + cover, I can confirm all the points in your post. Also, whilst QPs are recorded and therefore one of the few observable yardsticks we have, there's still a big gap to be filled between CCs and QPs - people may not want to ring QPs but still aspire just to be able to ring plain courses of simple methods at practices and services - and of course, once some of them have broken through that barrier, they will go on to ring QPs. That's exactly what is happening at my home tower.
The grass roots ringers that you mention though include, I fear, many who only ring at their own tower and who see no point in joining the association. Your quarter peal courses sound fantastic, but are irrelevant to someone who rings plain hunt by the bell numbers and regards methods as beyond them. — J Martin Rushton
My home tower was exactly that when I started - even PH was a stretch and nobody was in the association. Now everybody is in the association and everybody is working on ringing methods, albeit simple ones. That includes people who have been ringing CCs/PH for many decades. Why did that happen? Well, some of us "went abroad" and brought back ideas from courses, training days and more advanced towers. The breakthrough was when the band managed to ring an easy Minimus method in just a single practice. "Oh wow, so we
can ring methods!" was the vibe. After that, people would come to practices with lines printed out and homework done, and there's been continued progress by the whole band since then.
I think it's worth stressing that these were not new ringers who had hit a brick wall, they were long-term ringers who "regarded methods as beyond them". There's a significant number of such ringers who enjoy ringing but feel that they've reached their limits, but with the appropriate support could break out of their rut and start progressing again. The great advantage of helping that group is they are already committed to ringing - arguably even more so than people who make rapid progress!
The point I am making is that in this day and age, if we could only communicate better with this group of new ringers, and make them aware of what is possible outside their own tower, we could have a far more vibrant ringing community. However I fear that if we sit back and do not adapt because of the tired old cliche that these people are not interested, these keen people are either likely to give up and do something else, or be ground down by the system and just be another ringer that only, at best, rings shaky plain hunt by numbers in their own tower. In doing so, we will be losing a lot of the more able recruits and potentially good method ringers. — Roger Booth
I agree, but I think the applicability is broader than just new ringers.