Ringing Forums

As intangible cultural heritage can only be considered as such when it is recognised by the communities, groups or individuals that create, maintain and share it, it will be these groups and people who will be able to nominate the UK’s cherished traditions to be formally recognised.

And:

The process for adding items to the Inventory will be to call for items to be submitted by communities, groups or individuals. We anticipate requiring information about the item, its location(s), categories, and practitioners. Then, subject to a light-touch approvals process, the new entries will be announced on a regular basis – probably quarterly. We will look to engage and provide support for those who wish to submit items.

So if it is "light touch" and doesn't take a huge effort to get registered, I can't see why not. But as you say, it's early days yet.

Despite the way it is reported in the press, the current consultation is to establish the criteria for inclusion rather than establishing an actual list. The survey is now open at https://dcms.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9MsgupKs6P9kxw2

See also https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/2003-unesco-convention-for-the-safeguarding-of-the-intangible-cultural-heritage/consultation-on-the-2003-unesco-convention-for-safeguarding-of-the-intangible-cultural-heritage

it would raise visibility and makes things such as publicity, and funding slightly easier. I think any effect on recruitment would be indirect.

I absolutely agree it's a marathon and not a sprint, particularly when it comes to ongoing learning. Relatively speaking it's quick and easy to get someone ringing rounds and CCs, progressing to method ringing is obviously much harder and takes much longer, and some towers can struggle to provide appropriate support. And of course not everyone who starts ringing will want to progress that far anyway. ART is great at the early stages, but unless you are at a strong tower, progress can often stall after around L3. I'm not sure how you address that, but I do think it needs addressing.

I think the point about capacity is an important one to consider. I know of one tower that ended up with 10 - 15 new learners as a result of RftK, which doesn't seem remotely sustainable. We've limited our learners to a maximum of two per training session as we only have one teacher, even if that has meant asking people to wait (which they have). The reasoning is that it's better to try to get a smaller number of people ringing with the band a s quickly as possible rather than giving more people a poorer experience. Plus a steady supply of new ringers is easier for the rest of the band to integrate.

Perhaps it means getting some sort of process in place for managing requests that can currently come in from multiple different sources, e.g.

* https://cccbr.org.uk/bellringing/learn/
* https://bellringing.org
* http://www.ringingteachers.org/

As well as the many related association pages, e.g.

* https://birminghambells.com/
* https://derbyda.org.uk/about/education/training-request-individual/

but that's just a guess...

it's both rather than one or the other - without ringers, towers don't get maintained and fairly quickly become unringable. Several of the towers in Tameside are unringable and the ones which are technically ringable but that don't have a band need inspecting and work before they can be rung. The diminishing number of ringers in the area can't justify that effort for 1 or 2 ringing sessions a year.

It is very possible that Wigan could be without change ringing within five years or a decade. — Tristan Lockheart

It's already happened in some areas:

http://www.tamesidehistoryforum.org.uk/bellringing.htm

That page was authored in 2020. For the 3 out of 10 towers that were listed as still ringing then, only 1 is a method ringing tower and the numbers of ringers at 2 of the 3 are down by 30-50%.

We certainly have issues in this area but I'm not aware of ageism being one of them. — John Harrison

Good for you.

Is anyone saying it is the cure for all problems? — John Harrison

Where in the 2030 policy does it mention addressing the needs of mature ringers?

It seems obvious that we need far more effective youth recruitment than we currently have — John Harrison

Yes, I've said that several times. But it needs not to be at the detriment of adequate support for the majority of learners.

I don't see the evidence. — John Harrison

Perhaps you are fortunate to ring in an area where it isn't an issue. But that's certainly not the case elsewhere.

without alienating older, experienced ringers — Tristan Lockheart

That is not referring to older learners. And that's from an an external report, the CCCBR Ringing 2030 policy document mentions "youth" or "young" ringers nine times and older ringers not at all. So as I said, it's seems clear that the official CCCBR policy is to ignore them, despite them being the majority of recruits.

I agree that there is no clear strategy for specifically improving the opportunities available to older (50+) learners, but without the interest of people willing to put the time and energy into it, such a focus won't happen. — Tristan Lockheart

The age is way lower than 50+, it's more like 25+.

You aren't exactly making a compelling pitch. Why would anyone put their time and energy into something that appears not to be considered worthwhile or valued?

Whilst youth recruitment is clearly important, that must not be at the disbenefit of the majority of current ringing recruits. Even if youth recruitment is successful, it is unlikely to deliver the numbers in the timescales required to prevent the extinction of method ringing in many areas. We need to maximise the abilities of the people we have already recruited to keep method ringing alive until the next generation can pick up the reins.

the point is that any sort of progress is a good thing, it doesn't have to be at or even lead to elite level ringing - but I think we are violently agreeing.

Youth recruitment is important for all the reasons you give, but believing that that it's the cure for ringing's current problems is ridiculous, not least because there's no chance we'll recruit 4,000 young ringers a year (@Roger Booth's estimate). Adult recruits are going to be the majority for the foreseeable future, yet "Ringing 2030" seems to have ignored them. And as you point out, addressing "quality issues" benefits all ringers irrespective of age or length of service.

it would be silly to reject or accept people because of a stereotype. — John Harrison

Yes, it would be. But ageism is pervasive throughout ringing and now seems to be official CCCBR policy. Not that I expect that it will actually have much impact as the CCCBR is pretty irrelevant to the grass roots. "Run by the elite, for the elite" I think sums it up.

from what I've seen, the towers that are in most need of help are the least likely to look for it and are the least likely to be engaged with the branch. There are multiple reasons for that - the band isn't interested in improving, they don't realise they need help, previous bad experiences, worried about loss of face and so on.

I think a push model will work in some cases, but can backfire and make things worse. Even isolated towers are aware of other ringing in their area so a pull model may be better. Ringers who want to get on often look for a second tower to ring at, supporting them and letting them "carry the good news" back to their home tower is a slower but possibly more effective way of moving standards on.

That's not without problems though, there's a risk of the second towers getting overwhelmed, and of the core band getting burned out.

I think this misses the point that we have lots of older learners and many of them still have 30 years of ringing ahead of them when they learn. — Lucy Chandhial

You are right, it does. I was part of the "focus group" for the Yellowyoyo / Ringing 2030 effort and I made that point and others about older ringers several times, as far as I can tell that has been ignored and my feeling is that I wasted my time participating.

Item 2 of the CCCBR's Strategic Priorities 2020 and beyond:

That no ringer should hit a barrier to their own progression

is a platitude that I see no signs of ever being delivered - well, unless you start ringing under the age of 25, that is.

I hope that the recent trial survey of ringers shows that we have many ringers over 40 and over 60 who have been ringing less than five years and less than ten years so there is no obvious reason to assume that if you don’t learn under 20 (or under 40) that you won’t become a regular ringer who builds experience and rings for many years to come. — Lucy Chandhial

I agree, there's no reason based purely on age. We have an 80 year old who is doing the "homework" to learn simple methods and seems to be really enjoying the challenge. Will they ever be ringing Surprise Major? Unlikely, but I don't think they are interested in doing that anyway and besides, that's completely missing the point - they are making progress and because of their participation, so is the entire band. We need them ringing with us. Yet the ringing "hierarchy" writes people like them off.

I think we should be careful not to focus exclusively on recruiting young ringers and be careful not to leave older learners feeling unwanted, uncared for or disregarded when we look at the future of ringing for 2030 and beyond. — Lucy Chandhial

Yes, you are right but that paragraph accurately describes my experience of ringing, with the exception of a few beacons of light who are the only reason I'm still participating. Ringing is permeated by age based apartheid and I see no signs of that changing. Indeed the opposite, it now seems to becoming official CCCBR policy. From the outside, it appears that ringing is managed by the elite, for the elite.

If an adult is looking for a socially-based hobby and is happy to just ring CCs & PH at their local tower then I think they'll be fine learning to ring. But if they have any aspirations to progress into method ringing, I'd strongly discourage them as it will be an incredibly difficult and frustrating process, where the expectation is that you are incapable of it and not worth supporting. The assumptions about the low potential of late starters is endemic throughout ringing and is a self-reinforcing prejudice, to the point where the exceptions are considered to be notable.

Did the trial survey show any trends in educational subjects? Should we be asking ringers about their other hobbies / regular activities? How do we know whether someone is more likely to definitely enjoy and commit to bellringing? — Lucy Chandhial

Speaking from my own experience, I think a predictor might be anyone who has a reasonably complex hobby or hobbies that requires continual learning and that they participate in regularly. But there are many other activities where they'd be welcomed as a late starter, my advice would be to take up one of them rather than ringing.

If the learner's bell isn't where it should be it might be more helpful to give advice on that, or on the need to change speed, both of which are likely to be valid for several blows. — John Harrison

Yes, and personally I find it very helpful to be reminded which place I'm supposed to be in and/or what comes next, as losing track of that is normally why I'm in the weeds in the first place. Telling me a bell number often puts me right for only one blow.

so much of this I want to say 'but it shouldn't be like that' or 'but we never do it like that'. Even teaching other kids in my teens with no access to books or courses I'm sure we did better than that, so I wonder why such customs have become so widespread. We probably need to understand that as much as knowing all the ways to do things better. — John Harrison

There are many supportive towers offering a good learning environment with happy learners making progress. However it is and miss and if you are unlucky to be in a bad tower, you likely don't ring anywhere else and therefore can't recognise the poor deal you are getting.

It only takes a couple of toxic ringers to cause issues in an area. As an adult it can be uncomfortable reverting to being a learner, I think one of the most common attributes of adult learners is lack of confidence. Under those circumstances, the continual put-downs I've seen (and been subjected to myself) can be very corrosive. I've become inured to it (I've just started to ring Cambridge Major largely as a response to it) but that's not the case for everyone.

I would however stress that I've also had lots of support and encouragement from many ringers, for which I'm very appreciative. But the others definitely didn't help.

There's a whole section about standing behind in The Tower Handbook, see: https://jaharrison.me.uk/thb/12-2.html#12-2 . There's probably a Learning Curve Article on it too, called 'Back seat driver' iirc — John Harrison

http://cccbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/200011.pdf

All excellent advice, thanks for the pointers.

There needs to be a proper pipeline, I don't see much signs of one at the moment. - John de Overa

I'd be interested to know what form this might take. It's difficult for me more towards the lower levels than the higher levels to visualise such a thing! — Tristan Lockheart

I think the issue is that once people get to the CC stage, dedicated training usually stops and the majority don't get much beyond PH or PB5 "by the numbers" as a result. If the goal is to produce method ringers rather than CC ringers then training for that needs to start very early. Handling that's OK for CCs isn't good enough for methods and some level of theory needs to taught as well. For example explaining why "by the numbers" falls apart as soon as there's a bob or single, why those are needed in the first place and therefore the need to learn to ring by place not bell number.

There's much that method ringers take for granted that's obvious to them but far from obvious until you are told. Without those explanations a common assumption is that things like ringing by place are some sort of purist's stylistic concern, so can be ignored in favour of a tatty bit of paper you got from Fred with bell numbers written on it. Even things like ringing by the treble are a mystery to most base level ringers. How to actually learn methods isn't obvious either but you do need to learn how to do it. I found How to Learn Methods helpful, but I'm sure that's that's not the only option.

Endless PB is also not the answer. Methods need to be chosen on the basis of what the teaching goal is and not because of tradition. My home tower is ringing simple methods for the first time in living memory by starting out with Minimus - although we had 1-2 cover bells to make the striking easier. There are resources out there, such as ART's Minimus Toolbox, but I don't recollect seeing any mention of them in the learner's FB groups, so I suspect they aren't used much.

Ringing teaching can tend to be reactive rather proactive, e.g. you crash about and when the bells are stood you are told in no uncertain terms exactly how bad you were - when it's too late. Having someone standing behind is a solution but I think that's very hard to do well. The best have an uncanny ability to sense when a wobble is approaching and step in beforehand. I don't know if you can teach that skill or not, it would be interesting to hear from the best practitioners how they do it.

Oh, and making more effective use of simulators, but that's a topic all of its own.

Quite what all that would look like as a thought-out pipeline is a big question, but I know it isn't four plain leads of wonky PB5 a week whilst the grown-ups tut and roll their eyes.

To end up with 15,000 new ringers in 2030 you will need to recruit and start teaching around 30,000 people. That’s over 4,000 per annum. — Roger Booth

Even if youth recruitment is a massive success, the evidence we already have is that the majority of those new ringers will be adults. Having a plan for how to cater for them isn't an optional extra, it needs to be a key part the strategy for ringing's recovery and I see scant evidence of that. It's going to need significant changes to training, and attitudinal changes in the current ringing community.