Ringing Forums

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.

once we have got our new ringers to ringing Grandsire and Plain Bob, and having put all the hard work in, we wouldn’t want to see the more able ones travel and join another band in order to learn to ring even more advanced methods. That can’t be sustainable, especially if those bands haven’t put the hard work in. It will just reinforce a two-tier system or downward spiral which towers cannot escape from. I don’t mind the new ringers taking opportunities to progress, by ringing with others in the District or Guild, but they also need to remain members of the local band in order to help the others on the lower rungs of the ladder. That way the band as a whole will progress further. — Roger Booth

I had to ring in other bands if I wanted to keep progressing, but I kept ringing in my local band as well. The local branches (of several associations within reasonable distance) didn't provide any opportunities, so ringing weekly at other band's practices was the only option. It's been very satisfying being able to take what I've learned elsewhere and use it to help members of my local band make progress. I think it needs to become an expectation of new ringers that as soon as they can, they start "paying it forwards" and supporting people lower down the ladder than them. With appropriate support and training, you don't need to be a Surprise ringer to teach bell handling, for example.

Nor does my local band wish to see our practices over-run by learners from other towers — Roger Booth

We've taken a deliberate decision to only have two novice ringers at any one time, and at times there's been a waiting list as a result. The reasoning is that we don't want to disrupt the existing band, which for the first time in living memory is making strides forwards, including people who have been ringing for a long time and have been "stuck". Plus by taking on smaller numbers more frequently and focusing on them, they become assets to the band more quickly. We are also more likely to retain them if they are making continual progress. So far it seems to be working well for us.

the elementary levels on the recent North-West Ringing course were three times over-subscribed. The more advanced groups had roughly the same number of applications as places available. Finding sufficient helpers of the right quality has also always been a problem. — Roger Booth

I'd have been astonished if things had been any different. The focus seems to be on recruiting new ringers but there's an unaddressed demand from people who have been ringing for some time and have stopped making progress, and that's happening at a fairly elementary level. If we can't satisfy the needs of people who we've already recruited and trained in the basics, it's a waste of time recruiting more people who then get stuck at the same point. Recruitment is easy to measure and very visible but in terms of a long-term future for method ringing, helping Fred who has been struggling to master Cambridge Minor for two years is probably more important. There needs to be a proper pipeline, I don't see much signs of one at the moment.

Smaller local courses are far easier to organise, so long as they are held frequently, rather than the typical annual training day. — Roger Booth

I think "frequently" is key. There's nothing more dispiriting than having a go at something, getting to a point where it's nearly within your grasp and then not getting another crack at it for so long that you have to start over again.

Example from my own tower - adult, middle aged, been learning Cambridge Minor for more than two years, gets a plain course every week and has only just managed to keep a clean sheet. — Simon Linford

Another example: It took me 3 weeks to progress from being a Minor-only ringer to ringing Cambridge Major. But I don't think that says anything particularly interesting, other than there are a wide range of opportunities, motivations levels, abilities and more besides, so consequentially there's a wide range of rates of progress.

My question is based on item 2 of the Strategic Priorities:

That no ringer should hit a barrier to their own progression

I don't think that is the case at present. So what can be done to address that, for all people that take up ringing? And of course, there's not going to be a single answer, or a single endpoint.

thanks for the interesting observations about London, as you say it seems the issues are pretty much the same as here, although they may differ in severity. And I agree that engagement with other towers and ringers is key, the ringers who get out are the ones most likely to get on. Not only do they get more coaching, ringing time etc as a result, I think it's also an indication of a mindset that's conducive to making continued progress in the first place.

They aren't the people I'm really thinking about, it's the learners who start full of enthusiasm, get past the handling stage and then veer off into PH by-the-numbers and never get any further than (at best) PB5 one-bell-only-by-the-numbers-and-no-bobs. My observation is that once they go down that blind alley they very rarely emerge from it - I can think of many instances of that happening, both mature and young ringers. It happened to me, and took me an age to reverse out of.

How do we stop that from happening? How do we maximise the chances of learners progressing to being method ringers?

We have a mature learner who seems to have avoided the dead end, I think because they started using places very early on, by "being sold" it as a way of knowing when to switch between hunting in and out speeds, irrespective of which bell you were on. They have been ringing for just over a year and can treble without knowing the method in advance and are starting to ring simple methods inside, because those things are just a new application of something they already understand the need for.

I think perhaps what's missing is a "Learning how to learn Methods" step? There's multiple ways of doing that and what "clicks" is obviously going to vary between people, but I think there's a relatively small window in which you can establish the principle that it's a necessary part of the process of learning to ring, and it's a difficult sell as the initial attraction of ringing is primarily the physical side of it. But once learners believe that they can just learn methods as a sequence of numbers, it's often too late.

erm, well, yes. But the question was also about the why, not just the what. Specifically, what (if anything) can be taken from the experience that youngsters have of learning to ring that could help late starters. Because "Too old, not worth the bother" is now an unsustainable mindset, and was always a waste of potential.

I can think of cases which illustrate both sides of the argument, but accepting the generalisation that youngsters always learn faster, the interesting question is why? What is it that youngsters do that adults don't? I don't think it's a simple as intellectual capacity.

I think the answers are there in your post, youngsters are used to making mistakes, it's what they spend most of their time doing. Adult's aren't. If I was to make a generalisation about adults it's that the biggest issue is lack of self-confidence - as you say, youngsters mostly just brush it off and have another crack, and are happy to do that over and over in quick succession.

I'm not sure the environment in many towers is conducive for adults doing that.