Ringing Forums

If bands perform badly, that reflects on their ability rather than their motivation, I can't see why you would support ringers differently based on their motivation rather than ability. — Alan C

I think that's overly simplistic. Bands may perform badly for a whole host of reasons. ability being just one of them, and probably not the most important one. And why wouldn't you support ringers based on their motivation? What would be the point of trying to teach advanced methods to someone who was just interested in service ringing, for example?

motivation will be a strong determinant of whether they try to improve their ability ... — John Harrison

Yes, spot on with all of this comment.

I don't think motivation is 'their own business' — John Harrison

And the same here too.

I don't suppose anyone wants to perform badly, but why people ring is their own business and their motives are not subject to the approval, or otherwise, of others. — Alan C

A couple of responses to that:

• Some ringing is awful and it's clear that the culprits have no idea - and that includes some bands ringing methods. Although they might not want to perform badly, the end result from outside the tower is indistinguishable.
• I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to understand the motivations of people who ring, as AJB says, how else are you going to know what support they might need? What isn't OK is passing judgement on their motivation, which I have seen happen, sadly,

My comments below are not directed to you personally — Phillip George

Don't worry, I didn't assume they were. I'm just a late starter who's found it difficult to advance, who sees others who started after me in the same position and hopes things could be improved for them.

Do the majority of ringers want to improve their ringing? — Alan C

I think they do, but that doesn't mean they all want to become Surprise ringers. Whatever support they are given needs to be aligned with their aspirations and abilities. I think @Simon Linford's promotion of Devon CCs is a good example of that - indeed my home tower is now regularly ringing 60 on 3rds.

Whilst recruitment is obviously key, it's unlikely that the ability profile of new recruits is going to be significantly different to the current ringing population. That means that around 10% of them will become Surprise level method ringers. Even with vastly improved training that figure probably wouldn't exceed 20%. We need to have structures in place to help ringers perform to the best of their ability at whatever level that is - "Excellence at all levels".

What is improved ringing, is it ringing what you can with greater accuracy, or ringing more complicated methods (obviously not in Devon and Cornwall), or a combination of both? — Alan C

Yes, all of the above, with the understanding that not everyone is going to aspire to be a method ringer. Those people need to be supported as well.

The best hope would be setting up a separate parallel organisation where the emphasis is on the development of method ringing. ART is part way there — A J Barnfield

I agree. Some sort of national body which could provide support and resources to promote method ringing. If only we had such an organisation already... :razz:

I think you are right that many towers and branches are blindly doing what they've been doing for years, a model that clearly doesn't work otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. I don't believe that the majority of ringers are averse to change, and I don't think age has all that much to do with attitudes. I think the issue is that there's often a big disconnect between "bog standard" ringers and the people who are branch/association officers - it's not that nobody's hungry to improve, it's that what's on the menu is not suitable for them.

For example, I've had an email via one of the associations I'm a member of announcing a series of fortnightly surprise major/minor practices - but as far as I can tell it's a standalone effort, rather than something coming from the association. Whilst it's great for me as I'm just starting to ring Surprise, there's nothing on offer to help people cross the gaping chasm between PH and Surprise, and those people make up the majority of ringers. As @Phillip George said, the potential of most ringers is not being realised. Yes we need new recruits but if we can't meet the aspirations of the ringers we already have, what's the point? Improving the support for and skills of existing ringers must surely be the first step - we don't have to recruit them and for goodness sake they can already ring!

A good question is "What would it take to start to change things?" I think it's less than you might expect. It's easy to be daunted by the size of the problem, but unless you start somewhere, things will never improve. I'm not a great fan of "big strategy" approaches to problems, much better I feel to pick something small, get things rolling, see what works and what doesn't and to use that experience to iterate towards a fuller solution.

I think the question we should be asking is "What things can we can do quickly that would start to improve matters?", not "How do we draw up a master plan to fix all of ringing's issues".

We are all famous :rofl:

Mentioned in dispatches! :grin:

https://cccbr.org.uk/2022/10/07/ringing-2030-planning-for-the-future-of-ringing/

Fair points. And I have no idea how you'd work you the alternate timeline! :lol:

Clearly it's not possible to 'keep getting better' indefinitely, so that simplistic goal is easy to shoot down by those who don't want to make any effort — John Harrison

I think we are coming at that from different starting points in the human lifetime :grin: As a late starter, I expect to "run out" before ringing challenges do, which means I'll be improving for all of my ringing career and I think that's going to be the case for most in my position - indeed, it's one of the main reasons why ringing was attractive to me. However I can see that if you start young that might not be the case.

I agree with you about different sorts of barriers and core skills - I think the teaching of basic handling is better than it ever has been but there's still room for improvement. From my experience, teaching of the level of bell control needed for method ringing (which is a lot about anticipation and keeping "ahead of the bell") is often poor, and nobody tells you how to develop ropesight, or how to learn methods, or anything much else. It's often "You just need to do it". No wonder that many learners plateau at that level. It's much harder to teach the more advanced stages as unlike handling, you can't see inside people's heads, but I think we can do better than we currently do.

Your points about belfry reform are interesting, and confirm a lot of what I've read previously (not really surprising as you wrote some of it!) Overall though I still think it's had a negative impact, at least at the present time, because the last four of your points appear to have completely eclipsed the first two.

I think my comment about life support hasn't quite been understood ... I was referring more generally to ringing — John Harrison

Sure, but I think a lot of what applies at the tower level also applies more generally? The lower the starting base, the harder the recovery.

Excellence at all levels is a good focus, and I would interpret it in terms of attitude more broadly rather than narrowly in terms of just striking. — John Harrison

I think that's right, you aren't going to keep getting better, no matter what level you are at, without it. Once you get to ringing "for duty" it's difficult to regain the impetus to improve - why would you need to? I think we are still dealing with the damage caused by Belfry Reform, historically change ringing was separate from service ringing, and I'm sure that's what drove innovation and standards, not clanking away on a Sunday for 30 minutes.

Do we want keen ringers who will ensure ringing thrives? Or do we want it kept on life support by well meaning people who aren't that keen? — John Harrison

I think the answer to that is complicated. I think to keep a tower on life support and still ringing requires a large amount of keenness, even if it lacks in technical accomplishment. My home tower had a near death experience - for quite some time the band was down to two ringers who would turn up every Sunday and ring two bells - "Our aim was just to keep the bells ringing". Off the back of that the band has slowly grown again - I only started ringing because I can hear them from the house and went along to be nosey. In 2018 we rehung them and the same two ringers paid a huge part in that, both in terms of fundraising and labouring! They're both in their 80s and ring less now, but we owe them a huge debt of gratitude, I'm not sure I'd have kept going when they did. We are just starting to ring very simple methods, which we think is the first time that's happened in the tower for around 40 years. The other two towers in the town are now silent.

Estimates are that only around 10% of ringers are ever going to make it to the red zone and whilst better later stage training might improve that percentage, increasing the size of the 90% is I believe going to be the most effective way of increasing the numbers at red/black levels, which needs both recruitment and improving retention

We need to keep keen starters keen by providing them with encouragement and continuing support, then more of them will keep progressing and not hit a wall. "Excellence at all levels" seems to be what @Simon Linford is promoting, if I'm interpreting it correctly, and I think that's absolutely right. I do think things are beginning to change - I looked at the BellBoard data and for the first time ever, this year there have been more CC performances recorded than PB. I know there are multiple things that have contributed to that but the fact that "bog standard" bands feel that their contributions are valued enough to warrant recording seems to be something new, and I think it's to be welcomed.

There is what I call the 'service' group who are happy to do their stuff at their local tower with no particular need to progress, and then there are those who are interested in developing their ringing and will read and travel in order to do it. The latter might join a direct membership organisation that served to develop change ringing, and pay for it, while the former group probably wouldn't see the point. — Simon Linford

Obviously I can only speak from my experience, but that's the way it seems to me. I'm the only one of my cohort who has got beyond PB, and that's involved travelling to other towers to do so. The others mostly only ring at 1 or 2 towers, where there is existing "overlap" in people who ring at them. I'd be interested in a direct membership organisation if it helped in the way you suggest, many of the others aren't even members of the local Association, let alone interested joining anything else, so I think you are right there as well.

I do think that the "backbone of the average band" group tend to be older in general, the young and keen often move on, either to Uni and/or to towers where they can develop their skills. But I know some younger ringers (under 21) who are in the "backbone" category as well. It's easy to assume that most young ringers are good ringers whereas I think it's truer to say that there's some heavy selection going on as they have so many other calls on their time. It's the dedicated, and almost by definition, good ones who stick around. Older ringers value the other benefits associated with ringing more, and that helps retention .

I am 71. When I die, I take with me all my knowledge and experience. My learners will never achieve the experience I have because they all started at a "mature" age, and that also means that I can't necessarily pass on my knowledge either. We are an active tower but with a CC and PB5 repertoire. — Phillip George

Whilst "mature" people are never going to be able to reclaim the years when they weren't ringing, I don't think that passing knowledge on to them is a lost cause, anything can be passed on is always going to be of great value. Neither do I think that older starters are condemned to get no further than CC/PH/PB5.

There is rightly a lot of focus on youth recruitment, by definition they are the future. But we have to face up to the fact that even if it's successful, that's going to take time to come to fruit, and there's going to be a need for "nurseries" of existing ringers to support their growth; training method ringers is hard, training them without existing bands around them is I suspect almost impossible.

Turning to wrinklies and thinking about my own experience - I started 7 years ago in my mid-50s, although the last 2 years have been a bit of a hiatus... I think you can divide us into roughly two groups - the first being "backbone of the band" ringers who turn up every week and who are content with CCs/PH/PB5. They are probably the largest and most important group in terms of keeping towers alive and bells ringing.

The second are the "I wish I'd started this 30/40 years ago" ringers who get gripped by it just as hard as the current top level of ringers did. I'd put myself in the second category and what I lack in innate ability I can compensate, at least in part, with the time I have available to put into learning and sheer bloody minded persistence. It's often been difficult and demoralising, but I am starting to ring my first Surprise Minor methods, which I believe means I'm finally dipping my toes in the Red Zone. I think the NW ringing course shows I'm not alone, what's difficult is finding the help and opportunities to progress, not our willingness to do so.

There needs to be a paradigm shift amongst ringers at grass roots level! — Phillip George

I think that's right, by identifying people who are gripped by ringing and show potential, by providing accelerated and frequent tuition to those who have a burning desire to progress, irrespective of age. Such "streaming" is commonplace everywhere else, I don't understand why it seems to be so difficult for ringing to embrace it. Indeed it's part of the CCCBR's Strategic Priority 2:

More places could be encouraged or given the tools to establish ringing ‘schools’ that provide regular (weekly if possible) training and longer courses, particularly targeted at the Blue Zone / Red Zone border where we try and get ringers beyond Bob Doubles and Grandsire.

So I think the principle is already accepted.

But I don't think we have until 2030 to do it.

It' not just the extension over 2 days, it's also that "Day 0" changed in the CofE parish guidance document as well as well.

the ringing community clinging to its Victorian structures — John Harrison

This, in spades, is the problem. When I started ringing I was genuinely astonished when I heard about all the geographical "associations" and "guilds". Currently ringing has the hierarchical overhead that resulted from Victorian reforms but with neither the numbers nor the vigour of that period, and the CCCBR has the resulting sorry mess hung round its neck.

Many years ago I worked for what had been one of the behemoths of an industry, but was in its dying days. One wag compared working there to visiting a grand old hotel that had fallen on hard times - "The signs of past glories are all around, but the carpet is frayed, most of the lightbulbs are missing and the lifts don't work". Much as I love ringing as an activity, the current organisational structures feel very much like that.

the course is a very welcome step forward, but there's still the problem of keeping the momentum going afterwards, which needs regular opportunities to build on what you learned on a course. Like you I've been lucky to have been taken under a good tower's "wing" but I think I'm probably in a minority.

Yes that would be a good idea, John. Although I think the CC might say "we are here to organise; we can't be the do-ers as well". — Barbara Le Gallez

That's fair comment, but I think publicity and organisation is probably what's needed most to get the ball rolling. I suspect that the areas that are struggling the most are the "boundary badlands" where several association boundaries meet - the historic diocesan boundaries often make little sense in the face of modern urbanisation and transport infrastructure. Several towers in this area are in multiple associations, which I think shows the issue, and many keen ringers round here ring regularly in more than one association. The CCCBR is in the unique position to work across association boundaries, and I think that's what's needed, certainly round here.

Perhaps a sort of "dating website" for ringing might help - "Middle aged overweight balding ringer looking for like minded soulmates with GSH, for weekly fun and Surprise Minor"? The problem for many of us "late starters" is it's difficult to hook in to the small informal groupings who have been ringing together for decades, so unless you try very hard (and get lucky) a lot of people get so far along and then stall. Us late starters may never reach the giddy heights but I think we can perform an important role as a seed bed for the next generation.

So I would say, Central Council, keep up your great work, but you need to do something that makes you visible (or maybe audible?) to every single ringer in the country! — Barbara Le Gallez

I think helping with training in areas where method ringing is struggling or has died out would be a one way. If the associations in those areas were capable of sustaining ringing then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place, so it's somewhere where the CCCBR could make a big impact.

I haven't read through all of the Belfry Upkeep one yet but it looked good from a quick glance - I'll feed back anything after I've read all of it. The other two sound interesting as well, I project managed our rehang in 2018, I'll be interested to see if it contains warnings about all the mistakes we made ;-)

As @A J Barnfield said the numbers you'll find are all just estimates, how long a peal takes depends on the number and size of the bells, the state of the installation and probably the air temperature and age of the ringers as well!

You can get an idea of the current peal speeds from this link to BellBoard, in the last column. If you want to play with the numbers you can export them as CSV via the link at the bottom of the page.

For historical records, you could dig around in Felstead, but I don't seem to be able to find any times on there, although they are commonly recorded on old peal boards in towers.

There is a good explanation here, including a table of how long it would take to ring all the permutations of different numbers of bells.

The Mathematics of Bell Ringing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs