Ringing Forums

Not having any experience at association level, I would not wish to comment on whether that part of the system still works. But for most ringers, the most influential force in their ringing activities must be the benefice/parish level. They are the one who call the shots, and interpret diocesean rules and advice as they see fit.

This is where the problems lie, because the concept of local bands is in decline, or local bands are more transient. @Phillip George's tower seems to be a case study of "how to do it" for a local band, but you're not going to get that same relationship if you are covering multiple towers, or if there is only ad-hoc ringing from bands from other areas or non-territorial bands.

In this case, who is the main contact to be?

• A ringer who happens to live locally? They don't have as much of an incentive to keep relations particularly strong as they are not necessarily maintaining opportunities for themself if there is no band to ring with, and they are just one person.
• A member of the church team, either formally or informally? They don't necessarily have the contacts with the ringers or an understanding of our culture or practices.
• A member of the cluster or area band? Are they keen to do it or is it that they're the only one who is willing to do it and someone is needed to keep the bells ringable and make sure the church continues to allow ringing for the cluster or area band?

Giles, the traditional model only works if most towers have a tower band. But if we were to do a census of all towers nationally, how many would have a tower band who practice regularly with all bells and ring for Sunday services? And if there was data from 1990, what would be the difference in numbers?

I would be interested to hear from others of examples of best practice where there is no local band (either with no local ringers or with clustering/area arrangements).

Our parish changed the service times and neglected to inform us, and low numbers post pandemic preventing Sunday service ringing was not commented on by the vicar... I suppose its changing priorities. Clustering is definitely the way forward for keeping ringing going on Sundays at churches which want it (which do not always correlate with the towers with a resident band).

For members at the smallest end, we are paying over four times more per head than the larger societies, and we have fixed costs too.

As for "what are we getting for our money", you can't have an effective Central Council without a suitable budget, and I don't think everyone is happy to pay for said effective council.

I think one of the issues is the lack of 'involved' people. The 88 report states concerns about the number of teachers and steeplekeepers, and a lack of vibrancy at guild level. Certainly at my tower, one person is all three and is the only one who can do all of those things. It'd be interesting to see the bus factor for each critical role in towers and guilds - I know in our area, this dedicated individual getting run over by the bus could cause a chain reaction locally and result in a number of towers falling silent.

On overall numbers, a proposal is being put to the CC meeting in September to move CC affiliation fees to being based on the number of members rather than the number of Reps. Under the current Rules associations have justified their number of Representatives based on declared membership numbers, and whilst it's very unlikely that numbers are exaggerated just to get an extra Rep, there has been no motivation either to be absolutely certain the number is right. Moving to a model which has a direct link between number of members and cost (albeit not a particularly high cost) is likely to lead to much tighter scrutiny by societies of how many members they actually have. — Simon Linford

Sounds interesting - what sort of cost per member is being looked at?

I am increasingly of the opinion that some sort of census of ringers is required. No-one knows how many active ringers we have, their standard, if they can/do teach, and how often they visit each tower. Association/guild membership numbers seem to mean nothing now, with people not being active, not bothering with membership, or being double-counted by being a member of multiple guilds.

My worry is that we are overlooking areas where ringing is on the edge. The critical mass of ringers is faltering in some of the major cities even, and it's getting to the point where we don't have the handling instructors to take advantage of many of the recruitment opportunities which present themselves. Progression routes are minimal - there are call-changes towers and the elite towers, and increasingly little in-between.

The current layered system is overly-bureaucratic, and I'm really not convinced that the officers needed to run them are the best use of the increasingly-limited number of people willing to take on a leadership role.

A very sobering read; even more so given that so much of what that series discusses is still a problem now.