Ringing Forums

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

Some old diaries from the 1970s came to light following our recent house move. Flipping through the pages, I was surprised at how much ringing I was doing then - regularly out almost every night of the week and frequently travelling up to 120 miles (there & back) to attend a local branch meeting in the extremeties of the branch. Mind you I was then in my 30s so perhaps it was down to youthful enthusiasm! Nevertheless, branch meetings which used to be a montlhy event are less frequent now and sadly my peal-ringing days are well behind me now. — Peter Sotheran

Which hobbies these days are able to command such devotion? Modern life doesn't give that sort of time; it also gives people more options for recreational activities, even within a particular niche. I don't think we'll have so many young Peters travelling around the county to attend ringing sessions.

It's not so insurmountable; we just have to use the time ringers have available more effectively. Less throwing ourselves towards as many practices as possible, more targeted practices for ourselves and looking to see what we can do to have the best impact on ringers on other rungs of the ladder.

University ringing societies have come up a couple of times in this discussion, as being the recruiting ground for the Black Zone of the future.

Research conducted by the Young Ringers workgroup has found that most of the leadership and organisation at university societies is undertaken by existing ringers progressing to university. Most of these aren't coming from the major hubs where @Simon Linford is expecting the Red and Black zones of the future to mainly be, so the anticipated decline will affect the vitality of the societies.

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.

The consequences of a decline in any one part of ringing can therefore have a widespread impact. University societies provide a supply of ringers who move around the country to new areas, many bringing with them experience in organisation and leadership, and an interest in progressing further. Often, they'll make a big impact on the viability and vitality of ringing in the areas they live in after graduating. A decline in the university societies will therefore have a far-reaching impact at all levels of the exercise.

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.

If the established Red Zone, where the vast majority of peal ringing happens, doesn't help, then I can see the Red Zone dying out. 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. — Simon Linford

Is there anything we can do about that? Does it matter if there isn't? — Simon Linford

Well, it'd cause a cascade effect throughout the various levels of method ringing for a start, such that in thirty years time there might only be method ringing in the hinterland of the method ringing centres. That doesn't leave a very vibrant exercise.

The business plan is a high level document but has some useful pointers for all ringers, and although this is a generailisation, my opinion is that a lot of tower ringing lacks leaders with the foresight and determination to make any difference. — Phillip George

Back of a fag-packet, we need 10% of ringers to have leadership, foresight and determination. It’s a pretty big ask and perhaps we’d be more likely to have that local leadership if we had an organisation unit that’s smaller than a district but larger than a band.

In a situation where ringing is in an overall decline, we need more active and strategic leadership at all levels. @Phillip George I have unfortunately done the sums at a couple of towers I’ve known and identified that they were losing ringers faster than they could recruit newbies, and losing leaders/organisers faster than they could replace them. The conclusion they came to was that it was a bit alarmist and that things normally work themselves out. Lo and behold, the stats didn’t lie and now several of those towers are in difficulties when decisive action could have changed their circumstances dramatically.

Would you advocate a national model with one employer for ringing centres / ringing teachers across the country or would you see it working better if a local employer (like the local church) was the employer but with some standard job descriptions, etc which could be prepared as a CCCBR guideline? — Lucy Chandhial

The Central Council would have to be a very different organisation to be in a position to deliver local services and manage employees at satellite locations. With the move towards using more paid labour, it is slowly heading in the right direction. Delivering some guidelines and resources could probably be done in short order.

Regardless of that, however, I don't think it's right for the Central Council to deliver local services; this is really for local ringers to organise. Do we think we need to set up dedicated organisations for this, or is this something that local associations and guilds could take on?

Paid-for teaching needs to be good quality, and it also needs to lead somewhere. If you are thinking that this training only goes as accomplished call-changes how do you plan the pivot to the learner needing to seek out their own opportunities and learn how to make progress in an environment where they get less focused attention?

Paid-for teaching needs to be good quality, and it also needs to lead somewhere. If you are thinking that this training only goes as accomplished call-changes how do you plan the pivot to the learner needing to seek out their own opportunities and learn how to make progress in an environment where they get less focused attention?

I understand that the Essex Association is collecting data on each church with bells in their association based on the risk rating proposed at the Central Council AGM weekend by @Simon Linford. Might be worth asking them what they're planning.

State pension age is now 68, yet according to many in the ringing world, anyone over 45-50 is considered to be senile and incapable. it's a ridiculous and insulting attitude and says more about the attitudes of the even more elderly ringing "elite" than it does about the abilities of people in that age range. Move on please, the 2000s happened nearly a quarter of a century ago. — John de Overa

I don't think age has any substantial bearing on ability. My concern for towers like @Phillip George is that younger ringers who go to university or busy city towers will get used to towers full of younger people. From a social perspective, a tower full of 50+ ringers and kids isn't such an attractive prospect. I find that having a handful of 20-49-year-olds can make all the difference. And this is not saying that there shouldn't be older ringers in a band; it's just that you need that balance and people at a similar stage of life to you. Certainly in London, 20-30-year-olds are concentrated in a small number of towers where there are people of a similar age.

A lot of the Central Council's work on universities is bridging the gap between ringing as a child at local towers and continuing at university. Perhaps we need to consider the post-university period too?

@Jason Carter @John Harrison

Leeds University has an annual subscription for student members which automatically becomes a free life membership for alumni. This is broadly similar to other universities.

Given the massive imbalance between paying members and non-paying members, the lack of funds to fall back on, and very few sources of revenue, I don’t think there is any prospect of any university society ever paying the new full affiliation fees.

There seems to be a danger in this approach that the majority of ringers for the majority of their ringing career would be assessed as being sub par. Not that inspiring or that enjoyable in what, after all, is an entirely voluntary pastime. — Alan C

My comments were in the context of peal ringing as the commonly-aimed-for top end of ringing.

As it stands, we must and generally do ensure that all ringers feel their contributions are valuable. These aims that I have laid out would be subject to that same expectation.

I think that ringing more complex methods for a prolonged period of time is more likely to be saved by ensuring that the opportunities are there for a variety of methods to be rung at the QP level across the country.

If peals were to largely die out but QPs were to remain, it would be possible for future enthusiastic ringers to build back up to peals. But if we just accept fairly simple methods as the ceiling for most normal ringers, then that is just inviting skills and knowledge to not be passed down and die out altogether. The skill and ability to ring for a prolonged time and in a complex method is perhaps what we need to be most concerned with keeping.

That's why I'm not particularly worried about peal trends (to be fair, as a non-peal ringer!) but if QPs fall in quantity and level of difficulty, that would be my red flag.

Dear All,
Several people have said that peal ringing is the best, or even the only, way to achieve a high standard of ringing. That is why they are concerned that peal ringing has become less popular.
My opinion, however, is that it is much more important to work on getting a good standard of ringing at more basic levels.
So, no, I don't think it matters that fewer people are ringing peals. I think that what matters is to get ringers at a basic level able to understand how to ring plain hunt doubles that flows nicely
There are several reasons I think plain hunt doubles is more important than peals - the main one is that there is a lot more of it!
Regards, Barbara — Barbara Le Gallez

Yes, there is value in lower levels of ringing and plain hunt is worth getting right before proceeding further. However, just aiming for plain hunt doesn't really dig into the art of ringing (in my view).

I think we need to ask just what is our core aim as an exercise? Our ideal standard that we want most new ringers to reach over time?

For me, it is:

• ringing that is a suitable length to be a performance,
• in a variety of methods up to the median of difficulty of all methods rung at the moment,
• in a way that utilises the full ring*,
• and with good striking at all towers which are in a fair condition.

QPs in a variety of methods satisfy these criteria, and might not require so many resources to achieve.

If we only aim for plain hunt, that's all we'll be left with in fifty years' time. It may be good quality plain hunt, but it won't be the change ringing we know today.

*(i.e., a mix of 5,6,8,10 and 12-bell ringers relative to the number of towers with each number of bells)

If direct membership is clearly so beneficial, then the CCCBR has better set it up and let it rise on its own merits. Isn’t that the pattern set by the youth organisation? — Alan C

Because peoples’ understanding of the Council’s work is imperfect, they may well not appreciate the benefits of the organisation. What’s more, the current system where the Central Council affiliation fee is but a footnote in the accounts and minutes of most associations insulates the individual ringer from actively choosing to fund the existing centrally-provided services. Suddenly having to make that choice would reduce the likely number of DMO Central Council members as opposed to the number of people represented via an association at present.

If we were starting the associations now, the fees for associations would be a much harder sell. Would there be 1489 members of the Yorkshire Association, say, if there was not the established social norm of joining your local association? The same issue would apply to a DMO Central Council.

As for the youth organisation, the jury is still out on that one. Its membership is still relatively low and struggles to get the message out to all young ringers about its existence, and get the volunteers in place to cover the work required. Sound familiar?

None of that is unusual within the CofE, churchwardens, flower arrangers, most choirs etc do the same in their areas and ringers play their part as well. Categorisation of ringers as "freeloaders" by the ringing community itself is harmful and doesn't reflect the view of the CofE or its parishioners. — John de Overa

Our current deal puts us out of kilter with similar hobbies in terms of the expectation of paying for our venues in addition to equipment. Yes, the relationship with the Church of England is pretty mutual and a good deal all-in-all, but they are only our current ‘landlords’.

The emphasis on providing labour is perhaps misplaced when what we actually need to get the work done is cash, which many ringers assume can be substituted for by free labour. Sure, we could ‘brute-force’ the Council’s work by throwing man-hours at the tasks, but we don’t have the volunteer pool to properly sustain the current workload, let alone cover what is needed to tackle the challenges that will face ringing over the coming decades. So, yes, the attitudes formed by the existing ways of sustaining ringing do impact the willingness ringers would have to pay to be a member of a DMO CC.

The RW often reads like an Old Boy's newsletter and as such seems to be primarily of interest to those at the end of their ringing careers.
[...]
RW is a commercial enterprise, categorising its lack of appeal to many ringers as "freeloading" is wrong. Its problems are RW's problems, not those of its potential audience. — John de Overa

I have many opinions on the RW, as you and I have discussed on other threads previously, I think.
However, it is important to acknowledge that RW provides several important services:
• Centralised performance records
• Wide-circulation news and communication (probably more widely-read than the Council’s social media and website)
• The National Youth Contest
• A cultural and technical record of the history of bellringing
• Publications

All roles which the Council would be expected to take on if the RW was to collapse, still with considerable expenditure and less/no income, in lieu of the contribution RW subscribers and donors currently make to cover the benefit to the Exercise as a whole.

Dove's users are generally members of associations, as has been discussed ad nauseam they pay money to the CC so yes, they are paying for it.
I'd be interested to hear just what the hosting costs are for hosting of the Dove website and a low-end MySQL database. I suspect not much, the primary "cost" is the large amounts of unpaid time put in by those who develop and maintain it (see above). — John de Overa

Individual members aren’t making the choice to pay for it, though. I suppose members of associations are technically not free-riding, but how often does the CC affiliation fee come up as anything other than a line in the accounts or a brief mention in the AGM minutes? I doubt many people consider this as a significant part of their decision to join an association. This means that their support for Dove etc. is not a given if we’re going to ask them to actually choose to fund Dove etc. as part of a DMO CC.

As for the cost, part of what the CC gives to facilities like Dove is an oversight body, a pool/network to source volunteers from, readily available cash to cover sudden expenses and a succession plan for when the existing volunteers retire/die. You can’t attribute a portion of the general running costs of the Council to projects like Dove, but they still benefit from that expenditure.

Eh? Why shouldn't the CC be involved locally and provide direct benefit to ringers? — John de Overa

Depends on who you ask. Some say that it oversteps the Council's authority to be getting involved in local affairs, duplicating territorial association provision. It is also unclear whether the Central Council would have the resources even in the long term to have a local delivery function without absorbing the associations, particularly in terms of manpower.

Ringing has a massive cultural problem with free-riding, which could curb any attempts to get an acceptable contribution from individual ringers.

• We ring on bells in buildings we don't really pay for, and our primary 'landlord' is seriously struggling.
• There is an expectation that the Ringing World should exist for news and recording achievements, but subscriptions continue to decline in the face of rising costs.
• Information sources like Dove or UniversityRinging are funded/maintained by the Central Council yet aren't paid for by their users.
• Mid to high-level ringers are invested in by towers, often to then go on to greater things or move to other parts of the country. Many "pay it back" but many don't or can't.

@John Harrison @PeterScott

I fear that when ringers are actually asked whether they are willing to pay for the Central Council, they'd say no. As it stands, that decision is left to inertia (being affiliated is the 'done thing') and to the fact that people who have a greater understanding, and sometimes, appreciation of what the Council does have a greater amount of influence in the associations and thus on the decision to continue affiliation,

No matter how much of a good job the Central Council does within its remit, it is not and must not be involved locally such that individual ringers feel a strong direct benefit. However, that also means that it is difficult to demonstrate an individual benefit.

Yes. If there's a role for the CCCBR I think it's encouraging and supporting those grass roots efforts, not trying to tell people what to do. — John de Overa

What sort of support are you thinking of?

The qualifying membership of a society that doesn't charge an annual subscription is based on the number of its members who are active, ie who take part in a society event during the year. — John Harrison

In many uni societies, the students will pay a small fee, and alumni pay nothing, so falling under:

the number of members paying (or exempted from paying) membership subscriptions in 2024 or your society’s equivalent membership year

I think what it sounds like you need is a comprehensive book for how to run multi-band intermediate methods practices, starting from a base of maybe two or three fluent method ringers, aimed at groups which are mainly at the lower levels and need to progress without having a strong band around them. Step by step, a bit like ART. There could be Zoom mentoring systems for the local leaders to get advice on how to progress etc.

I completely agree. Our tower can't wait until whatever initiatives trickle down. We are working on this now, initially to consider which areas need to be addressed and to set priorities; this in conjunction with the PCC, our biggest stakeholder. We have to at least try to sustain our future by developing our team, looking after the installation and looking outward into the community. — Phillip George

The Ringing 2030 projects fall into what could be called 'Central Services' and 'Central Resources'. The former is only of use if added on to a fairly strong local base and the latter requires people to choose to use them and put the work in to apply them. Either way, it is down to local people and teams to make use of the Central Council's efforts and work to improve ringing locally. As you say, you need to run and change things locally, and in turn the Central Council will do its best to support you.

Ringing 2030 is like a new crop - it requires a well-run and well-resourced local farm to grow and be harvested successfully. The Central Council can only provide the seeds.

Sounds like we have our first paid employee role - project coordinator.