Ringing Forums

Societies should encourage voting to be informed, so anyone voting should be able to do so woth full knowledge of relevant facts. From that it follows that there are two different cases:

If a topic is to be discussed in a meeting, all those eligible to vote should have the opportunity to hear the dedbate before voting, which means thee must bed present either in person or online. Obv ly you can’t force people to listen, or even stay Assamese, but you can try.
But where a vote is not preceded by a debate, and relevant facts have already been made available, there is no need to allow stand alone voting.
An obvious example is the election of officers. Normally the only facts provided are the candidates’ names, so no arguments to be listened to. Sometimes a little is said about candidates, their track record and/or whazt they cash bring to the role. That’s not a debate and the summaries could just as readily bee posted beforehand (as they are for CC officers and most professional bodies). In fact it would be better for ringing societies to do that. It would salve merging time. It would encourage more members to taker part.

once I'd got to the blag-my-way-through-PB5-by-bell-number stage and realised what was needed to progress any further. I had to go back to basics and greatly improve my existing skills — John de Overa

Why do we have so many who get to that stage without the basic skills? Many of them don’t have the insight or determination to unlearn the wrong way of doing it and go back to basics, which is why do many are stuck. We shouldn’t be leading 6hem down that path in the first place.

The ringing community is pretty good at getting people up to PB level, but it generally falls apart after that — John de Overa

I think one of the reasons is that ‘up to Bob Doubles’ on the mental front isn’t accompanied by the range of competences needed to ‘ring a method’. They can just about struggle through PB5 without those skills, but add an extra bell to the mix, or an extra feature to navigate, and they can’t cope.

I spent a lot more time on the end of a rope during COVID — John de Overa

So did I. I learnt Zanussi. Having a dumbbell and simulator at home meant I could fit in a course whenever I had a spares 20 minutes.

we have to ring with the band we have — John de Overa

Yes, we do. And it’s far more difficult to get results with people who didn’t have the ideal skills grounding. But if we keep teaching new ringers the same way we will always be in that position.

I know of one teacher who point blank refuses to teach other than primarily by rhythm, with ropesight second, and CCs are banned. It causes all sorts of problems as soon as they ring anywhere else. — John de Overa

That is clearly wrong. A rounded ringer needs all the skills. I don’t advocate only teaching rhythm and listening, I advocate establishing it first, so it can get a foothold. We are visual animals, and if the first experience of trying to ring a bell related to anything external is being told to ‘pull after that rope’, a reactive action at the last minute, it’s hardly surprising they don’t tend to think several seconds ahead based on what the bell feels like, and find it too difficult to concentrate on a rather confusing sound, at a different time from when they ‘pull’, and which feels like a distraction from the already difficult task of ‘follow that rope’.

as they start by ringing rounds, seeing / following is inevitable — John de Overa

Only if you choose to do things in that order. People I teach become competent ringing rounds before they have to integrate ropesight and coping with the variability of other ringers.

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CCs are the next step and they are all about following bell numbers. — John de Overa

Which is one of the reasons Gordon Lucas said they were not a sensible step on the route to learning tithe skills to ring methods. Read what he said in the Kaleidoscope book - the rationale not just the popular exercises.

We also drill in to people from the very start that ringing by "Follow X" — John de Overa

We shouldn’t (and I don’t). Blame the teachers not the pupils.

you can't force people, particularly adults — John de Overa

Agreed. But you can expose them to the right things in the right order. I have never had a pupil who couldn’t progress from solo bell control to rounds with a simulator with no visuals.

we have agreed as a band that we want to learn and get better together, — John de Overa

I think that’s is fundamental. One of the commonest reasons I hear for why bands don’t achieve much is that they aren’t interested in progressing. That’s normally couched in terms of not wanting to learn fancy methods but in practice i think it imbues everything, including even ringing simple methods well. And once the collective mindset is established it affects new ringers who either adopt it themselves or leave.

we get people ringing Rs & CCs with the band as soon as possible — John de Overa

How soon? Before they can ring steadily and hold to a rhythm?

they then tend to freak out if they can't see bells — John de Overa

That tends to confirm that they have been conditioned to rely on ‘seeing who to follow’ and then making a last minute action just after they do so, which undermines any sense of rhythm they might have acquired. And when they fail to look at the right rope, or it’s not there, they have no means’s of knowing where to place their next blows, even approximately.

it's an incorrect assertion anyway. Abel (and I believe all the other simulator packages) support a "moving ringers" display, — John de Overa

You don’t have to turn it on, and when I started using simulators to teach I didn’t have a screen, let alone pictures of ringers.
For initial teaching I never do turn on visuals because my aim, as stated previously, is to help the learner develop confidence in using their rhythm and listening skills before they are exposed to the visual element, which tends to dominate and crowd them out.

But I think visuals do have their place, — John de Overa

Agreed vision has its place. Ropesight is a most valuable skill for understanding what is happening around you.
Ironically the focus on following the rope in front, which many people teach and learners tend to adopt if thrown in at the deep end without already having developed rhythm an listening, inhibits the development of effective ropesight because narrowing the vision onto individual ropes makes it hard to see the overall pattern.

on a bell with a tied Clapper. You ring a bell whilst Abel simulates the other bells. At first this is very difficult to do, because you are ringing from sound alone, without seeing the position of other ropes. — Brian Plummer

I think that is more true of people who have already rung with other people and become dependent on seeing other ropes. I get learners ringing with the simulator on their own before the try to ring with other ringers, and it doesn’t seem to cause a great problem.
Doing that let’s them develop confidence in their rhythm and listening in a controlled environment before they have to cope with the additional task of making sense of lots of ropes, and the pressure of ringing with lots of other people.
IMHO ringing simulators are grossly under utilised. They are cheaper to acquire, and easier to use than when I first rang with one over 45 years ago.

tune ringing may be an anathema to those change ringers steeped in our Victorian culture, — Roger Booth

Current ringing culture certainly inherits some features from the Victorians, notably service ringing and territorial societies, but that hardly applies to change ringing. The Victorians promoted it but it began a couple of centuries before them

not many that have gone beyond just trying a cafe at the back of the nave — Simon Linford

We have that, following recent restoration to make the space more suitable for community use. We also hire the church for a lot of concerts and other events.
Wokingham Methodist church also extended its buildings to form the Bradbury Centre, of which the church proper is just a part, and used for some events.
Adelaide Baptist church in Glasgow used to run a B&B in its buildings, which I used for many years, and other things. The B&B stopped several years ago but I don’t know why.

at each practice people write their names in the attendance book. We’ve done that for years, I suspect well before all safeguarding came along.
Sometimes we also write down what was rung.
That’s the easy bit. Totting up the number at each event is easy too s we can compare over the years. When we were thinking about the best time to for Saturday practices it helped to see whether morning, afternoon or evening got better attendance. (There was no pattern, all had high and lows.)
The analysis by individual took quite a bit of work to transcribe the information into a spreadsheet. I first did it to compare pre and post Covid. Having got the framework in place it was less effort to add another year.

There's actually a more up to date version of that analyais at: http://odg.org.uk/sdb/documents/misc/MemberAttendance24.pdf

it’s a lot of hard work by the ringing masters and others. The number of practices built up over the last few decades. 40-50 years ago we just had the monthly Saturday practice (minus AGM and competitions) but they lasted 3 hours, whereas now they only last an hour and a half.
OTOH we often has over 30 ringers present in the 80s (I suspect not all present for the whole time, but it’s a long time ago and I can’t remember). Now we get smaller numbers attending, see: https://odg.org.uk/sdb/documents/misc/MemberAttendance23.pdf

this is nothing to do with world heritage status. I suggest you start it as a new topic. That will make it much easier for everyone to keep track, and ensure your question gets read by people interested in it, who might not be interested in the world heritage question.

how many opportunities are you providing each month? — John de Overa

Slightly more including one or two youth ringing activities (shared with adjacent branches). The monthly plan includes elementary, intermediate, advanced and daytime practices plus 3rd Saturday, which most months is a practice except for AGM and two striking competitions. However, not all practices are held. We check for numbers in advance and cancel if there are too few. That avoids anyone turning up and being disappointed. See: http://odg.org.uk/sdb/diary/

What sort of level are each of those? — John de Overa

Elementary has a lot of exercises to help develop core skills (ART based) as well as hunting and s8m0le methods. Intermediate was spun off as a separate practice for those who had progressed most in the elementary. It is more focused with each practice working on specific methods beyond PB, and also including 8 bell ringing. Advanced is from Stedman 7 and TB up to S8.

there needs to be focussed practices for all levels — Martyn Bristow

Our branch runs elementary, intermediate and advanced practices each month (as well as a weekday afternoon and Saturday practice for all levels). The most successful is the elementary, with strong attendance. The intermediate grew out of that (to take forward the more advanced cohort) and is more focused. The advanced practice used to be S8 but was broadened after Covid when numbers dropped.
All of them provide for things people can't get in their own tower. The slight exception is the advanced practice, which although it is all 'advanced' is less advanced than the top end of our weekly tower practice. Many of our ringers don't attend branch practices - a bit chicken and egg..