Ringing Forums

only two of the ringers are regular church attendees, so community spirit maybe relevant ..

I ring in a rural village in Cheshire, nearly all the members of the band are members of the Guild, however there is little interest in what goes on outside of the immediate area, and certainly no proactive seeking out of opportunities to ring, I offer lots of these but few are taken up on anything like a regular basis. This is in no way a criticism of any of the ringers, I am personally more engaged with ringing generally and do keep an eye on what is happening at the CCCBR and particularly in ART, but there are very few people that take the same level of interest, I am fairly sure that if our Church closed, then only a few of the band would go elsewhere to ring, they do it because it is local, and they enjoy it to a level. We have an enthusiastic youngster who has declared that when he goes to university next year, the presence of a University RInging Society would be relevant to his choice, but predominately it is purely a hobby for the vast majority, and, if they lost the opportunity to ring, then it wouldn't be the end of the world for them. So I would expect that plans for 2030 are very low on the priority list for the vast majority, you can look at these forums, they are I suspect occupied by the "enthusiasts" and the "dedicated" and we are the minority trying to make decisions for the majority ... ever was it so.

This is a normal problem, both for the learner, and for the person running the practice, who has to fit something in for everyone in 90 minutes, generally with 2/3 of the emphasis on newer learners to get them to Sunday service ringing levels. The final 30 minutes of our practice is for some method ringing, Stedman Doubles, Plain Bob and Grandsire (with touches if we have a couple of visitors that can help out with the latter), so, unless it is on the Simulator, I have to go elsewhere to ring anything else.

The photo was taken on Queen Adalaide Way by Ely, and yes it was Ely Cathedral. On the Division Bell Tour Nick Mason had a Church Bell which he struck at the start, on the Pulse Tour they used a recording (if I remember correctly) , there is a record of how they recorded the Church Bells and the issues they had doing it, I’ll try and find it !

Agreed :-)

exactly my point, however as usual you put it more eloquently! I do however have some reservations on the number of websites that add a “published” or “valid until” date on a section of contact information.

no, but a report as a snapshot in time is a known annual (or other!) event, clearly marked and understood whereas a website can updated at random intervals (or not) so there is no basis on which the average reader can make an educated guess as to whether the data is current ..

Websites have always suffered from being out of date the moment after they are published, I have seen some where a date is added to the contact details after which time the information should be considered “stale” in the case of a TC this could be the next APCM date, this is then an update to be made by the person in charge of the site. In defence of the “contact form” this is a simple method of quickly updating where a request goes to, and it is usually a relatively simple process to add some logic to get it to multiple or different recipients .. but there is no silver bullet for this one I am afraid as humans are involved !!

I have been using the same rule of thumb as Peter Sotheran with 1.5 ringers to bells, we have to constantly look for new ringers as we are a small village (<1000) and we have some young ringers some of whom will be off shortly to University or work and will, I expect, move away. We therefore have our "core" ringers and a moving feast outside of this, but the target is 1.5 ..

I grew up on a Farm, they were always referred to as Cotter Pins on machinery..

Sorry .. hadn’t seen that

@John Harrison you did post a two part, the first is here .. https://cccbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/200601.pdf just what I needed as this is my next conducting requirement! Thank you !

I get ringers to make sure when they are gripping the sally that the bottom of their righthand is gently resting on the top of the thumb of their left hand and then when they release the sally to "feel" that this is still the case, the rope then will (almost) naturally arrive in the righthand without a problem, it feels a bit funny at first, but it will help.

I have also had learners that tend to slide their hands down the tail end, had to video it before they believed me, video = fantastic tool !

Absolutely true and something I have been saying for a long time, and when it comes to needing new ropes, maintenance , repairs who is going to pay for “our” hobby .. ringing is definitely the cheapest activity that I do by a long way, and therefore I give my time willingly to help others to help me continue to do it ..

This is an interesting discussion, comparisons with cycling and running have some similarities, but the learning processes require far less "effort" .. you can learn to ride a bike in your back garden, have a couple of goes, fall off and go back tomorrow, leave your front door, you can go for a run, these are outside any organised training that you may wish to attend ( aka a Parkrun ), the latter will give you confirmation on your progress with a time and support from lots of others ( Parkrun are very good at this ) , however with ringing, your first port of call is not "put a dumbell in your loft" so you can go and have a go and then leave it until tomorrow if you get bored or frustrated ( the Bike scenario ) for Tower Bells you have to a) find a teacher, b) arrange a suitable time c) go to a tower and these three things to me make it very difficult to compare the activities, you are so dependant on other people to help you, the same with Handbells, they are not the sort of thing the average interested person is going to buy to find out if they like it, financially its not a second hand bike or a pair of trainers.

I personally have no real interest in Handbells and I think they are a different skill, I struggle to see a relationship beyond the methods or changes between the two, i did manage plain hunt minor on handbells on the Mobel app one afternoon, but give me a real set and I would be hopeless I am sure - but is that because I don't have the interest in it ? .. I suspect so.

Mini Rings may create interest, but they are not like ringing in a Tower, I would like to see a study on the transfer of a learner from learning to ring on a mini ring and their subsequent transfer to a normal tower, the same as one on those who learnt to "ring" during lockdown on RR and what happens when they go and try converting the push of a button to a rope ( there are some comments above on this )

You have to create interest in youngsters and give their parents something as well to get any slight commitment from the pair, if we are looking to recruit youngsters then a "Learn to ring" week in the holidays where you basically take charge of their kids ( AKA Childcare ) may spark the interest of the parents and it's then down to the teachers to spark the interest of the kids, and you can get paid for this (shock horror!) , "Childcare" can be £60/day+ so expenses are covered and you can provide a good environment for their time and the teachers can get some compensation as well.

If its adults we want to get, then give them a reason to learn and provide opportunity, make it a family affair so they get to do something different as a family - they then encourage one another and even though you may only get long term take up from the few, a seed is sown.

"Lite" is never going to be achieved with lumps of metal that you weigh in Cwt !

the ART method of teaching teaches from bell down, much more controlled and less stressful for both learner and teacher

Branch training events are only as good as those that are organising and supporting them, in my view they need to be very targeted either by aim(s), method(s) or ability, it is of little use to a new ringer to see a "Branch Practice" where the content can't be seen to be relevant. As a relatively new ringer, I still remember seeing a "Ringing Masters Practice" and the immediate thought was "Definitely not for me !" , expecting that they will be ringing "high brow" stuff, and because it was never explained, I still don;t know what they are, but I know enough people now that a) I feel I can ask without embarrassment and b) even if it is way above the level that I ring at, there will probably be an opportunity to hunt the treble to something, or bong behind at some point so I would go along with that sort of expectation, but my point is that I wouldn't have done that a couple of years ago ( pre-covid ) and in fact I didn't.

In our tower, I am responsible for the teaching side of things, and I ensure that all our newer ringers know about the practices and guild ringing in good time ( youngsters especially have very busy diaries !) and then I arrange for appropriate transport and then go along as I know where the comfort zones and the stretch points are for them and can influence the practice and experience that they get, if they just went along on their own, they would tend not to jump forward and grab a rope because that is their nature, but when they do they love ringing with people far more competent than I am, and more importantly with guidance from a different voice than mine, and with far more experience!

So my take is that it doesn't matter what sort of organisation a Guild or Branch is as far as opportunities for ringing are concerned, it takes someone in every tower to stand up and take on the responsibility for ensuring that all ringers have the support to improve themselves, they then can look around for, or even arrange sessions to suit.

Just a thought, if you have a local tower that you can use for a course then speak to ART about setting up a Module 1 course (Bell Handling) in your area, I have done this recently as the courses in the NW are fairly thin, we advertised it via our local guild and had no problem getting enough people to attend.

Our tower is in the same situation with a lot of learners and a few (4) that can ring PBD , last week I tried an experiment and got two of the newer learners to ring 5 and 6 as covers to Plain Bob Minimus, after a couple of courses, I moved them to the treble and got them to focus on the three bells and they hunted up and down to fourth place and then together declared that this was much easier than call changes. I remember when I trying to learn about 4 years ago, I asked if we could try Minimus and found that it was far easier to “see” the ropes falling with fewer bells to worry about. Minimus is a most underrated learning tool at the start of method learning, place learning and striking , often because there are more than 4 at a practice and the belief that all bells that can be rung should be rung all the time ..