Ringing Forums

The aim was never to have done the recruitment done by 203 — Martyn Bristow

Sorry, no, the R2030 document says exactly that:

• 10000 more active ringers by 2030 (new and returning)
• Half of them under the age of 30
• 30000 people under the age of 20 have heard about or had a go at ringing
• Retention rate of at least 50% of new recruits
• Double the number of teachers and trainers of ringing

Ringing is led by volunteers, and there’s been a struggle to get contributions to the tasks. — Martyn Bristow

How is that surprising when it offers nothing at all for the people who are most likely to have the time and inclination to help? Worse than that, ringing culture in general tells them that they are not of any interest, have little to offer and won't ever amount to anything.

Personally, I do what I can .. but I have a full time job and a tower to teach — Martyn Bristow

Same here - I'm still working full time and have taught half the people in our tower how to ring, even though I'm a "Will never amount to anything" ringer myself. I didn't do it because I thought I was well qualified, I did it because there was literally nobody else, and the tower was dying.

I admire your determination, but personally I've had any temptation to involvement repeatedly beaten out of me. Good luck!

And what do you expect to be left behind if/when they have all gone? — John Harrison

If it is to reverse decades of decline it will have to start growing again from the roots, not the top. Will it be able to do so? I don't know but I'm doubtful, particularly as many of the facilities we depend on are at risk as well.

In our tower the ‘top end’ ringers that you want to depart range in age from under 18 to over 80 so it will be a long wait. — John Harrison

If your tower was representative of the majority of towers, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Ringing, in particular elite ringing, is dominated by network effects, and in many places, that network has already gone. And in others, its unsustainable.

There is also a dependence on local support for both teaching, handling and providing support for more advanced ringing. If this local support also falls away, then again, the vitality of the societies is affected. — Tristan Lockheart

Yes, you are completely right. The video I posted a link to earlier about British Cycling's experience of how deliberately focusing on the grass roots is a clear demonstration of how interest and activity at the lower levels of an activity is a prerequisite for a vibrant elite level, but ringing somehow believes it is different. It isn't.

With the current structure and dynamics of ringing, it is not sensible to expect any decline within one area or part of ringing to be contained and not spread to other parts of ringing. — Tristan Lockheart

Agreed, it's an idiotic belief. But apparently widespread.

Ringing 2030 is solely about growing grass routes ringing in a sustainable way. But also keeping the grass routes growing, as people have joined and faded due to poor opportunity. — Martyn Bristow

R2030 has been going for 3 years now, nearly halfway to its target date and it's had no impact whatsoever on the ringing in my area, in fact most ringers here have never heard of it.

R2030 is a misdirected flight of fantasy. The emphasis is entirely on young (i.e. under 30) ringers, "young" appears 7 times in the "business plan", "adult", not at all, despite the fact that most people currently turning up at towers wanting to learn aren't in the only demographic R2030 considers worth attention.

As for the fantasy target of 10,000 new ringers with 50% retention, according to Dove there are "1,602 full-circle rings which are in the British Isles, have 6 bells, are ringable, and have a practice". So in the next 4 years every one of those towers is going have to recruit, train and retain at least 12 new ringers, assuming every single tower is capable and willing to do so. It's utter nonsense.

The work I’m doing is all about getting new people onto towers, getting a better balance and with better awareness. If there’s any other ideas to fixing the grass routes please suggest and get involved — Martyn Bristow

I admire your tenacity and wish you the best of luck, but I believe that with the current strategy and glacial rate of progress, you are doomed to fail. As for involvement, why would I participate in something that isn't interested in addressing the challenges faced by ringers such as me? I have "engaged" in the past, I was briefly a non-voting member of the ART board, brief because it quickly became obvious that what was required was a compliant gopher, not someone to represent the silent, struggling ringing majority.

One of the biggest problems that ringing faces is that it's already fractured into two halves, with the top half thinking that they know how to fix things based on attempting to wind the clock back to how ringing was when they were learning, almost universally when they were young. That world no longer exists and can't be regained. As I've said, my belief is that until those people are gone, ringing will continue on its death spiral.

Ringing 2030 addresses that partially, but that relies on its leaders driving it on — Martyn Bristow

Ringing 2030 is irrelevant, it's a top-down effort where the same people that have been talking amongst themselves for decades about elite ringing are doing the same yet again. It will not fix ringing's grass roots problems.

I keep meaning to look into the data of peals and quarters but i never get time — Martyn Bristow

That's also irrelevant, it's solely a measure of elite ringing, and I suspect mostly of how many elite ringers are now retired and have more time to ring peals. It's also a very lagging indicator of the state of ringing.

If you persist in measuring the wrong thing and then basing your decisions on that it's inevitable that your decisions will be wrong.

we hold a tower Open Day and allow visitors to see the bells, clock and to take photos over the roof tops of the town from the tower roof. — Peter Sotheran

We have a similar situation with regards to access, and we do pretty much the same as you describe, usually a couple of times a year. We also do evenings for the Brownies & Scouts. The highlight for everyone who comes, regardless of age, is chiming a bell. We don't really regard it as a recruitment event, mostly it's for community engagement, although we have had new ringers as a result.

We need to get a strategy to improve peal ringing — Martyn Bristow

It's not just the decline in peal ringing we should be concerned about. There has been a general decline in the frequency of meetings and the interchange of ringers between neighbouring towers. — Peter Sotheran

You are absolutely right.

If the FA said its strategy for Football's survival was to depend on the offspring of Premier League players, the reaction would be incredulity and derision, yet apparently that's the strategy that the ringing illuminati think will work. Survival depends on grass roots ringing but, as has already been said, the gap between basic ringing and method ringing is already unsurmountable for many keen ringers. And that's irrespective of age - we have a 12 year old in our tower who shows promise, but there's nowhere he can realistically go for progress beyond the basics that we can offer him.

Every time this comes up I'm reminded of Ruth Eyles's Keeping People Ringing presentation at the ART conference 11 years ago. You can perhaps quibble with some of the details, but the principle of concentrating on growing the grass roots and then the elite levels will follow seems incontrovertible, yet it's fallen on deaf ears in the ringing community.

My conclusion is that we'll have to wait until the current upper echelons of ringing are gone and ringing has gone through a near-death experience before there's a realistic chance things can be turned around. But I don't expect I'll still be ringing when that point arrives. The problems have been known about and discussed ad nauseam for literally decades yet things have only continued to get worse. The incontrovertible inability of those running ringing to address the issues shows the continuing lack of realism, despite the starkness of the situation.

What percentage of these ringers would achieve anything beyond Plain Bob and Grandsire (basic change-ringing)? I don't think it would be any greater than it is now, partly because few ringers actually want to move on. Bell ringing is usually not the only thing they do, it isn't easy, and change-ringing is even more difficult! — Phillip George

You are absolutely right, you only have to look at the original "Room at the Top" series, published over 20 years ago, to realise that the learning curve has always been steep and the drop-off rate huge. But support for those who have the potential and the desire to progress is often non-existent. There's no point worrying about recruitment for method ringing if there's no path for the majority of people beyond PH/PB.

I've told our ringers that they've got to work harder in their ringing, visit other towers, go to meetings, get experience, talk about ringing to others and help get recruits. However enthusiastic I am counts for nothing if others don't step up to the mark. — Phillip George

Again you are right, but I think that's a cultural issue. It's a big step for many adult learners to put themselves back into "learner" mode just in one tower, expecting them to do that in multiple towers is an even bigger ask. But it can be done, one guild I ring in has a "cluster" approach and it's the norm for people to ring in more than one tower from the start, because the existing ringers are mobile so there's nothing unremarkable in doing so.

the majority have ringing parents - about 80%. Having ringing parents is a huge advantage. — Simon Linford

Interesting, I guess that's not a new phenomenon in terms of those who make up elite ringing? But it's also going to be affected by ringing's demographic issues, albeit with a one generation delay.

The use of simulators for extending the ringing repertoire is not perfect, nothing is quite the same as ringing with ‘real’ ringers

No, it certainly isn't, but if it's the only option you have... However with good access to one and an understanding of how best to use it you can make much quicker progress. For example after being more or less told by one ASCY grump that I'd never be able to ring on 8, two weeks later I rang my first Major (Cambridge) at a branch practice - well, I did have a point to prove, and a tower key...

If we tried cast of 1000 with a full day of ringing every second month and ‘homework’ to be done with simulator / Abel / pen and paper in between it could be more productive than relying on regular practice sessions.

I've love if there was something like that available, and happily travel quite a distance to attend. But I don't think every 2 months is often enough. I go to Whiting Society full day events, but they don't frequently enough to be really useful - for example I learned Bristol on the simulator and rang it successfully at a practice earlier this year, but that's the only chance I've had. And If there's no opportunity to ring the stuff locally, I do wonder how much point there is? I'm hacking away at Cambridge/Yorkshire/Superlative/Bristol on the sim for my own amusement, but there's little chance of me ringing them for real, and as you correctly say, transferring from a sim to real ringers does need additional practice.

The part about accepting people who won’t go further and how to manage that is definitely a tough one

Sure is, but it's not a new problem. It's always going to be a balancing act, but I think both new and established ringers are aware of the challenges and providing there is balance, are prepared to adapt.

some of those ringers find they can’t progress any further at their tower and don’t feel supported by the Branch or District to keep them progressing and another proposed reason, which could also be true for some, is that bands become overwhelmed by learners who all need to practice endless plain hunt (for example) and some of the more experienced ringers lose interest or the tower stops recruiting while getting this batch of learners to a standard.

I've seen exactly that happen. I also know one tower that took on (I think) 15 for RFTK, 6 months later they had just 1 left. Our strategy has been to take on only a couple of learners at a time, but to get them fully integrated into the band as quickly as possible and to push them forward as quickly as they are comfortable with, then repeat the process, even if that means asking people to wait. For example, we've "adopted" a ringer from elsewhere who is mad keen but wasn't getting the help she needed at her closest tower. She's been ringing for 3 months, is starting Plain Hunt and is coming on our tower outing in a few weeks (and no, she isn't a "youth"). It's a strategy that so far seems to be working well for us.

This does suggest that methods which allow for more solo learning and practice, mixed with very targeted opportunities with the investment of support from experienced ringers, will become more and more important

Absolutely agree. Not only do I practice on the simulator a couple of hours a week, I also run weekly sessions for two of our ringers who are on the cusp of method ringing. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, not just for them personally but also for the whole band, as they now have the skills and just as important the confidence needed to provide a solid band around our earlier stage ringers.

I agree with your analysis of the current situation. However I do have quibbles with some of your conclusions.

If we get 10,000 new ringers into the Blue Zone, particularly if they don't learn at university or younger, the reality is that they will not enter the Red Zone - they won't get over that hurdle of ringing methods that aren't Plain Bob and Grandsire

If all they get taught is PB & GS then it's not exactly surprising if that's all they achieve. I ring at one small and mostly unknown guild's very well attended monthly 6-bell practice and although there is some PB & GS, the majority is TB & Surprise, and there's a "Method of the month". It's all ringers "of a certain age", all keen to progress who are being supported in doing so. Are they ever going to get to the heady heights of BMax? Unlikely, but that shouldn't mean they are sidelined - these people are the seed bed for the upper reaches.

We acknowledge that we can create competent Bob Minor ringers, but continuing a training programme beyond that is hard.

Yes, it is but I don't think that justifies not trying. My historically-call-changes-only home tower is unlikely to churn out PB ringers, mostly because that's not what we are asking people to learn. They are more likely to ring something like Double Oxford first. None of them can do so yet, but they all successfully rang the frontwork within 10 mins of first trying, and without looking at the blue line. That was a deliberate decision - the point of it was to show them that DblOx was a realistic thing to aim for, and we are now working on the other skills they need, for example simulator sessions to sharpen up bell control and ringing by place, which they are tackling with enthusiasm. Will that be successful? I don't know, but I think a new approach is badly needed, even if it isn't ours.

Endless clanking away at PB is an exercise in demotivation, like much of ringing teaching it's no longer not for purpose. I'd love to see is a thought-through and detailed pathway from PH to Surprise, having been through the ART process myself, it's "Now go learn methods" at L4/5 just doesn't cut it. The 95% drop-off rate between L1 & 5 is no surprise to me, I gave up on ART after L4. Getting people to L3/4 is a big investment, not fully capitalising on it is a waste of resources that I don’t think ringing can afford.

There will be a fast track through for people who learn young, and a small number of cities plus the SRCY and ASCY will support them.

I understand why something like ARA is attractive for people who have been grinding away at the problem for years with little support let alone thanks and I don't disagree with fast tracking talent, but I don't know of any similar activity to ringing that's survived by concentrating only on the elite. My conviction is that a plan that's based purely on elite ringing is doomed to fail.

There's also tremendous selection bias going on here - the ringers who are picked up by programmes such as ARA have already been subject to a heavy pruning process. ARA isn't dealing with all the youngsters who turn up and don't make it that far, and they are the majority. And without a viable community at the lower levels, who is going to give the young talent the basic training and a regular band to ring with that they need? If there's no pipeline, there's going to be no pool for ARA to draw from.

Is there anything we can do about that?

Yes, lots that can be done. But that's going to need people at the top engaging and listening to people at the bottom, and I'm afraid that's not one of the ringing community's strengths. To be direct, there's far too much "We didn't learn that way" and "We know best". Well, clearly not, because if that was the case, ringing wouldn't be in crisis. Personally I have little appetite left for engagement, other that grumping on this rather moribund forum, I've been "put in my place" far too often to want to bother any more. I'll continue to work on my own ringing and helping my own band because I think I can make a difference there. But ringing in general? Hah!

Does it matter if there isn't?

Yes, immensely. Because without it, ringing is dead.

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.