Ringing Forums

Ringing has a massive cultural problem with free-riding — Tristan Lockheart

I strongly disagree with that. It's a depressingly common sentiment and a counterproductive one. If ringers can't convey the value they bring to the CofE, then nobody else is going to either.

We ring on bells in buildings we don't really pay for

• The majority of bell installations were paid for by public subscription many decades ago, the capital costs to the CofE for bells are effectively zero.
• The presence of change ringing bells in church buildings has limited effect on running costs of the building, the steeple / tower would usually be there anyway and would still require maintenance.
• The majority of funding related to bell installations is raised by ringers, without them that money wouldn't be available to benefit the CofE.
• Ringers have an entire funding mechanism for maintenance of assets they don't own, in the form of BRFs.
• Ringers don't get paid to ring for services, unlike organists.
• When ringers do get paid, for weddings, there's usually a "tower tithe" taken for ongoing maintenance. As far as I know, that's not something organists do.
• It's normal practice for visiting ringers to pay steepleage.
• Ringers contribute 10s of thousands of hours of free labour every year for bell maintenance.
• Ringers contribute 10s of thousands of hours of free skilled tuition to learners.

None of that is unusual within the CofE, churchwardens, flower arrangers, most choirs etc do the same in their areas and ringers play their part as well. Categorisation of ringers as "freeloaders" by the ringing community itself is harmful and doesn't reflect the view of the CofE or its parishioners. For example this year two of our ringers have been awarded Bishop's Badge awards:

The Bishop's Badge award recognises outstanding contributions of lay people to congregations, local communities, and the Diocese.

And from last year's awards:

On receiving his Bishop's Badge in September, John Sterland said: "My late father whilst being a member and former tower captain of St Andrew’s (Swanwick) received a badge a few years ago for his work supporting the major refurbishment of the clock and bells at St Martin’s Alfreton. I feel quite reflective and privileged at being recognised in a similar way."

There is an expectation that the Ringing World should exist for news and recording achievements, but subscriptions continue to decline in the face of rising costs.

• The RW often reads like an Old Boy's newsletter and as such seems to be primarily of interest to those at the end of their ringing careers.
• £100 / year for something that's dominated by lists of ringing performances which are already online is ridiculous.
• There isn't enough good material to publish it weekly, a monthly publication at 1/4 the cost might be more attractive.
• RW is a commercial enterprise, categorising its lack of appeal to many ringers as "freeloading" is wrong. Its problems are RW's problems, not those of its potential audience.

Information sources like Dove or UniversityRinging are funded/maintained by the Central Council yet aren't paid for by their users.

• Dove's users are generally members of associations, as has been discussed ad nauseam they pay money to the CC so yes, they are paying for it.
• I'd be interested to hear just what the hosting costs are for hosting of the Dove website and a low-end MySQL database. I suspect not much, the primary "cost" is the large amounts of unpaid time put in by those who develop and maintain it (see above).

Mid to high-level ringers are invested in by towers, often to then go on to greater things or move to other parts of the country. Many "pay it back" but many don't or can't.

• There's a degree of truth in that, but I don't think it's a new issue.
• There's a strong culture of "Pay it forward" in ringing and it's the exceptions to that which are most noticeable.

it [CC] is not and must not be involved locally such that individual ringers feel a strong direct benefit.

• Eh? Why shouldn't the CC be involved locally and provide direct benefit to ringers?

please don't disrespect those who practice it. — Robert Brown

No disrespect intended, the quality of the ringing that Devon bands demonstrate is second to none and yes, much better to have well struck call changes than poor method ringing. I think the existence of the CCCBR Devon Call Changes website, written by an ex-CCCBR president to promote the art to the wider ringing community shows that Devon CC ringing is valued. My own tower, well away from Devon, rings 60 on 3rds regularly and one day we might even get to a level of striking that wouldn't get us laughed at in Devon - although I suspect we'll never cut the mustard when it comes to raising and lowering.

The issue, as @John Harrison says, is the way CCs are used outside of the Devon tradition when the striking is poor and people try to ring methods the same way, by bell number and not place and so on. So the criticism is about Method ringing, not Devon ringing,

The fault is not teaching the right skills in the first place. — John Harrison

That's what I was getting at. I know people who try to stop learners using bell numbers, which I think is futile. What I do is explain the limitations, so they don't fixate on numbers and have a goal to ring by place. So far that seems to be working.

You are unusually fortunate to be in a tower where cambridge major is regularly rung, — Rosalind Martin

This is very true. I have to travel 45 mins each way every 2 weeks for 2 half courses of Cambridge Major.

At a tower where I used to teach, there was a core of long-established plain hunt ringers and no matter how I tried I could not find a way to lead them forward and away from ringing by numbers.. It was a bit like children learning to swim and being reluctant to let go of the edge of the bath! — Peter Sotheran

That seems to be common and as such, I don't think can be entirely the fault of the ringers, I think the way ringing is taught is a large part of the problem - letting people learn a difficult skill one way (by bell numbers) and then expecting them to be comfortable ditching that for places is always going to be fraught. And I think the same applies to the Circle of Work.

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. — Roger Booth

I think that's common, and not just for new learners. I went to an all-levels 8-bell practice that was called within the archdeaconry with just a week's notice. 24 people turned up. The ringing covered Rounds to Cambridge so there's demand across the board.

This looks awfully like teaching people how to teach, and it's only a small subset of the material on the ART website that's there to support people teaching ringing.

sure I understand that. But there's really no justification with ART being so well established.

This seems to have disappeared from the CCCBR website but I think it's an excellent guide to ringing teaching:

Retention of Ringers - Recent Developments in Coaching

Tip 8 seems particularly relevant to this discussion:

Do not show favouritism to any learner

there's a fairly widespread assumption that a prerequisite for being a good ringing teacher is being a top-flight ringer yourself. Of course there are lots of instances where that's true, but lots of others where it isn't - and why would it be the case in ringing when it's not true in other teaching? I think it's also important to remember that learning to ring isn't learning a single skill - someone who is excellent at teaching method ringing may be much less skilled when it comes to teaching handling.

One of the important skills of a teacher is to have multiple approaches and to find the one that "clicks" with a particular learner. In my opinion, anyone who can only teach people who think in a similar way to them is not a good teacher.

it's more common than it should be, unfortunately - in some towers particularly if you aren't in the first flush of youth. I don't have any really good solution to suggest - in my experience someone who has allowed the issue to occur in the first place is unlikely to modify their behaviour if you say something. You either have to suck it up or go elsewhere, which is what I've done in the case of one tower - and two other ringers have since followed suit. Unfortunately some towers / ringers aren't interested in bringing people on unless they fit a very narrow profile. Such towers are the walking dead but don't realise it - best to go elsewhere and leave them to their fate.

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. — Roger Booth

They have and very successfully too, but I think there's a gap above the current L5 that needs to be addressed.

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. — Roger Booth

Things do seem to move incredibly slowly, and time is running out, as you say.

If this becomes a ‘course’ and people get paid for it (and the ringers pay £10 per week to attend) it changes the dynamic of the practice and might make others question why they are offering a very similar service for ‘free’ — Lucy Chandhial

I think courses need to have a syllabus, to be for a fixed period and run completely separate to normal practices, then there won't be an issue.

thanks, that sounds similar to the approach I'm taking. The first of my learners to ring CCs well enough for services did so about a month ago, I moved him on straight away to PH on the tower sim + tied bell. I turn the "follow this bell" highlight on and map his bell to either the treble or tenor so he has the maximum possible number of blows in a row to "get the rhythm" and I count places for him while he rings. My feeling was that while he had his "I'm learning bell control" head on it was best to push on and get him to learn to move the bell at both strokes and continuously, rather than getting too used to the much simpler bell control that's needed for CCs. So far it seems to be working well.

how soon did you move them on from CCs to PH?

There's a school of thought that says if you are going to teach method ringers then they shouldn't be allowed to ring CCs at all, but I think that's unrealistic in most towers. What sort of habits are you thinking of and what's the best way of avoiding them?

of course that is a barrier that does not have to be crossed for a ringer to enjoy their ringing and contribute to a band. — Simon Linford

Perfectly right, but the learner's Facebook groups are full of people who really, really want to ring methods, even if it's only simple ones. That pent up demand is surely a positive sign.

I mean both of them. And clearly I don't expect CC reps from different regions to move into failing ones, that would be ridiculous.

Struggling associations should already have CC members, so I have to ask what are they achieving that's of any value if their associations are moribund? I think a significant number of associations have become hollow shells, at best they are ineffectively trying to do the same things they were doing 30 years ago, whilst still encumbering themselves with the same pointless busywork. Best they are just left to quietly expire.

I think the Belfry Upkeep website is a good example of something that's already been achieved, it's very well done and I think it would be difficult for a single association to put together something like that. National level marketing & promotion is another activity that seems like a good fit with the CCCBR, for example the recent promotional videos, again both very well done. Mobile belfries - although I'm not sure how much of that is CCCBR and how much is the Trust. I think a common platform for running associations is another, I'm assuming that's what the "Unified ringing platform" is.

I think it gets more tricky when it comes to direct grass-roots involvement, where I think the biggest need is help with training and building local ringing communities. Not only is there obvious overlap with ART, it's something the existing associations are supposed to be doing but often aren't. I think Cast of 1000 is a good idea in principle but would need a lot of tact if it was to be successful. I've seen experienced ringers help at practices and while they were 100% correct in what they said, noses were put out of joint. Perhaps a pull model would work better than push, for example regular "improvers" sessions that are non-territorial. That would attract the keen and wouldn't require buy-in from everyone in a tower. I think summer schools are fine but aren't a full fix if people are coming back each year having made no further progress. Perhaps long-running and regular sessions off the back of the summer schools would be one way? That might be a more productive way of engaging Cast of 1000 ringers?

it also seems to be a wish list. The 2024-6 section seems too complicated and out of touch with reality. — Roger Booth

The report and programmes all seem top-down. A bottom-up approach would be far better. — Roger Booth

That pretty much sums up my thoughts after reading the online project plan, spreadsheet etc. The individual tasks sound fine in isolation, but taken together there's little chance that the workgroups are going to be able to deliver most of them. I think the current workgroup task lists could do with some ruthless pruning.

It the ringers a grass roots level in local towers, Districts and Branches that need to do the work. — Roger Booth

Yes. If there's a role for the CCCBR I think it's encouraging and supporting those grass roots efforts, not trying to tell people what to do.

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. — Roger Booth

Yes, as above.

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. — Roger Booth

I think anyone who has learned in the last decade is probably in that category. I've been associated with 5 different associations so far, from watching them at work the 3 "traditional" ones are utterly unattractive to become involved with. The ones that do work have none of the historical hierarchical nonsense that appears to obsess the traditional ones. I've watched all the recent deckchair shuffling around membership & fees on this forum with despair - obsessing about annual amounts that are less than the cost of one post-practice pint. What is particularly depressing is that it doesn't seem to be appreciated what a huge disincentive to involvement it is to those of us looking in from the outside.

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. — Roger Booth

I can see the reasoning but what I suspect will end up happening is that the "honeypot" areas where it's quick and easy to demonstrate success will get all the attention, whereas they are the ones that need it least - the HS2 / Levelling Up effect. I think a range of different levels of morbidity would be better, not least because it would give important information for future planning,

Just under 60 ringers subscribe to our District Spond app. — Roger Booth

Spond has been mentioned in one of the Facebook groups, it sounds interesting. Has anyone done a writeup of their experiences with it? Even if something custom is eventually produced by the CCCBR / ART, it sounds like Spond would be useful for gaining experience of what works / doesn't and helping provide the information to draw up a full set of requirements.