Ringing Forums

as I said, "from afar" ;-) From the outside the CCCBR can look like one fairly amorphous blob, the distinction between "Central Council", committees and the CCCBR isn't really interesting. It's measured by those not intimately involved by what it does, not how it organises itself - frankly, people don't care as long as it is visibly doing things - something which I think post-CRAG has significantly improved. The Dove's website & database revamp, the new belfry upkeep site, the Devon CC eBook, the mobile belfry, "Calling It Round" are I think all good examples of things that have visibly changed - and I know there are other new things as well, those are just the ones that immediately sprang to mind.

As a "rank and file" ringer observing from afar, before the CRAG changes my impression was the Council was a pointless talking shop, whereas now stuff seems to be happening, albeit still slowly in some cases.

If "democratic" means "everyone has to vote on everything before anything gets done" then yes, it's less "democratic", and a jolly good thing too. I don't see it as any less accountable though, in fact I suspect if anything in practice it's more as the changes have meant more people are taking an interest and scrutinising what's happening.

thank you for the advice, however it's significantly easier to find good 6 bell ringing round here than it is 8 - and it's hard enough to find 6. The minor band who have taken me under their wing are capable major ringers and if there are ever 8 at a practice they'll ring on 8. I've still got plenty to go at ringing minor, and I'd rather aim at being a decent minor ringer than a bad major one!

the battery life was awful and almost certainly wouldn't have lasted the length of a peal with video running.

Here in Darkest Northern Derbyshire we are still waiting for the herald to make his way over Doctor's Gate, the packhorse trail over Snake Pass, bringing news from as afar as Sheffield. We've had strange portents of light in the sky over the last few nights, so we knew matters of great import were afoot.

But that might just have been the planes on approach to Manchester airport...

A comment on the CCCBR page on Facebook, posted just after midnight last night (Friday 9th):

Cameron Watt
Hello all - I'm the author of the national CofE parish church guidance and can be contacted at camerondotwattatchurchofenglanddotorg - happy to be contacted for clarification on anything in our document. With the cascade of proclamations for the new monarch beginning Saturday morning with the Principal Proclamation from the balcony at St. James's Palace at 11am. There will then be a further proclamation in the City of London at noon, and then further proclamations in the other national capitals the following day (Sunday) at noon. There will then be proclamations at county and unitary authority levels from 2pm on Sunday, and at town/parish level from 4pm. The hope is that there will be muffled (or half-muffled) ringing before the local proclamation, then unmuffled ringing following the local proclamations, then muffled ringing until after the funeral. Her Majesty enjoyed church bell ringing, and the way that it unites communities. Thank you all for all that you do, and especially at this time - when you are helping to unite our nation in both commemorating the late Queen, and celebrating the accession of the King.

"unmuffled ringing following the local proclamations" and "proclamations at county and unitary authority levels from 2pm on Sunday, and at town/parish level from 4pm" seems very clear to me, and conflicts with the CCCBR advice in the same FB post:

Following further discussion and interpretation of the CofE guidance, we suggest the following for open ringing following the proclamation of the new Monarch expected on Saturday. Open ringing from 11am (BST) on Saturday (D+1) following the proclamation announcement until the flags are lowered again at 1pm (BST) on Sunday.

Having already rescheduled once, to move the proclamation ringing today, it's simply too late to move it again. There's already a confused mix of ringing open/closed today/tomorrow across the country.

Plus if we are to ring open today and keep so until flags are lowered at 1pm on Sunday, we'll be ringing open for Sunday Service at 10am - which seems somewhat strange as it's a service that will commemorate the queen.

@Simon Linford this absolutely isn't your fault or the CCCBR's, but can you please express the confusion annoyance of the ringing community to the CofE on our behalf? There's simply no excuse for this shambles, they've had literally decades to figure all this out in advance, including different times of day of the announcement of The Queen's death, the day of the week it happened on and the fact she might be at Balmoral.

I think the other thing that would be helpful is guidance on whether wedding ringing & practices should continue, albeit muffled and ringing something within each band's ability. My own feeling is that that the public will want to hear as much ringing as possible, not less.

I notice that the document on the CCCBR website has now been updated and is the same as the one on the CofE site. However I've just had an email from our association chair, he's been told by the diocese that we are to ring on Saturday. I've pointed out the inconsistency between that and the latest Lambeth House guidance... So yes indeed, "Some checking to be done"!

Note, it appears they've moved the accession ringing back a day, to Sunday. The CCCBR and CofE documents don't agree any longer, I assume the CCCBR copy will be updated at some point. The CofE one is here:

https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/Guidance%20for%20parish%20churches%20on%20the%20death%20of%20HM%20the%20Queen%20-%208th%20September%202022.pdf

4pm seems to be the earliest for open ringing, and just for the accession. They should be muffled again afterwards, until the funeral.

https://cccbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Guidance-for-parish-churches-on-the-death-of-HM-the-Queen-8th-September-2022.pdf

I'm happy to provide a list of suggestions, but I suspect this forum is not the best way of doing so. I think there would have to be a large amount of "Suck it and see". Some ideas will already be "on the list", some will be non-starters, others will seem like a good idea but don't work in practice, some will work in one place and not another, other initially non-obvious things will become obvious only after some time.

If anyone really knew how to do this, the discussion wouldn't be happening in the first place.

No disagreement here.

as I said, "experienced ringer". I know the difference is there but I still have to mentally adapt when I ring on "real" bells, it would be better if I didn't have to. And I know of one case where someone who learned solely on the sim simply could not ring with real ringers, so realism is important. And I don't have beginners ringing with the moving ropes either, because that would be silly.

There are two workgroups focussed on young ringers... — Graham John

Glad to see it, but it only addresses a small section of the current ringing community. I hope that's "as well as" addressing the issues with progression that many existing, non-youth ringers are facing. We don't need to work to recruit those people, we just need to help them, it's pretty much the definition of low-hanging fruit.

Glad to see the other initiatives as well, but I don't think they are sufficient. As I've already said, the associations in my area are pretty much a busted flush as far as addressing the challenges around method ringing goes - if they weren't then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. What would help is something that bypasses the current association model when that's necessary.

I have read that some in the the CCCBR would like to move to a direct membership model. To justify that, the CCCBR needs to be providing something that can't be provided by the existing territorial associations. Support for restarting method ringing in areas where it has or is dying out ticks just about every box I can think of. There are a number of ways I think the CCCBR could help, and it is an unrivalled position to do so as it has access to expertise at a national level. One of the earlier posts mentioned "sustainable" and I think that's absolutely key, no point parachuting in expertise if things fall apart as soon as it's gone. Roadshows, courses, ringing centres etc are all good things to have, but empowering and supporting people so they can get to the point where they can self-sustain in the long-term is I believe more important.

Yes, the Stedman equivalent is interesting, particularly when it swaps between H&B and B&H dodges at the back, thank you. And next time my striking looks like the blue line in Abel I'll claim I am right :grin:

On that point, Abel, at least, shows the target striking the same as the red "squared off" version, perhaps it would be good to have an option to display it as the blue one? Mind you, Abel has other things that are probably more important to address, such as not modelling wheel sizes for the moving ringers. An experienced ringer actually picked up on that when I gave him his first go on the simulator, although I believe one of the simulator packages (Virtual Belfry?) does account for wheel size.

t doesn't mean do nothing until 2030 when some magical transformation will occur — Graham John

Phew! :grin: Thanks for the information, as for "initiatives" "being progressed", good to hear it - are there any details available anywhere? Thanks.

Thanks, I'm going to steal that, print it out and put it on the tower noticeboard if I may - I've tried to explain the difference the HSG makes but struggled to get it across - that makes it visually obvious.

It's the same information as https://www.whitingsociety.org.uk/articles/basic-tuition/the-handstroke-gap.html but stripped right back and more visually punchy. I particularly like the with/without HSG side by side comparison in yours.

your suggestions are all good but we have issues which make our area particularly challenging:

• willing to teach method ringing ... plug the gap now before it's too late
  unfortunately my belief is that we are already past that point, we don't have those people any longer. We need to figure out how to restart method ringing as it's dead, at least as far as new ringers are concerned. To learn to ring methods I have to teach myself on the sim, and then travel to ring with a capable band - and there, if I as the "learner" can't go, there may not be enough people to run a practice. That's good for me as I have had to rapidly "ring up" towards the band's standard and I get lots of rope time, but not a good thing overall.
• local support from tower captains ... not available at their home tower
  towers are pretty isolated from each other and many of the TCs can't ring beyond PH themselves - and the geographical area is covered by 4 different associations, so outreach and coordination are particular challenges. For example, until relative recently we didn't have anyone in our tower who was a member of any association.
• Your local associations are probably full of "established ringers"
  they may be elsewhere in the associations, but not near here. The associations are large, some of them would take 2h30m or more to get between the farthest separated towers. We do visit our nearest ringing centre when we can, but it's a 2h drive for 2h30m ringing, and only happens once a month. So whilst there may be suitable people, they aren't realistically accessible to us at the frequency we'd need to re-bootstrap method ringing here.
• a few people with the teaching skills to join a group
  there really aren't any, and those that might be capable are "old school" and/or getting to the end of their ringing careers, or are burned out. Plus I believe part of the reason we are in the current situation is because of the way method ringing was taught in the past - we need a new approach that's more "small steps" and approachable for bands where the majority are method ringing learners - we don't have the luxury of being able to surround people with a band of competent method ringers on a regular basis.
• The phrase "critical mass" is something that has been lurking in the back of my mind. ... I have a suspicion that we are nearing the failure point of method ringing in certain areas ... Some areas may be in too poor a shape to wait for @Simon Linford and co's 2030 plan ... One thing is for certain; the longer it takes for us to make changes, the exponentially harder it will be to make ringing sustainable.
  I think you have nailed it there, our area feels like such a "basket case". As I've said previously it was never great anyway, and I believe is now beyond the tipping point and method ringing is finished here without considered, coordinated and sustained action. On the upside, if it can be fixed here, then I think it can be fixed anywhere :grin:

You mentioned @Simon Linford's 2030 plan, I don't think I've heard about that? In any case, as you say I don't think we have the luxury waiting until 2030 around here.

Ah, but if you are being really pedantic, what about the effect of the handstroke gap? :razz:

Thanks for the helpful info.

I've spoken to people who have rung here going back as far as the 60s & 70s and it's never been particularly great - in the past there were individual bands that had periods of high activity and quality ringing, but not any more. The problem we currently face is that we appear to have dropped below "critical mass" as far as learning method ringing goes, the bands that are still active are elderly, and only CC/PH. There are a couple of towers in the broader area with method bands but they tend to be populated by older ringers and not particularly engaged with learners. It's going to be difficult to move things along without a "backbone" of established method ringers, and even if we had that I think we'd have to coordinate efforts across multiple towers. The issue there is that there are 4 different associations in the immediate area, none of who talk to each other. I think stepping outside of the territorial boundaries in the way ART did is probably the best option, but as I understand it that wasn't an easy process and I'm not well established enough a ringer to take that on.