Ringing Forums

For £100, I would be expecting weekly 1:1 sessions and a strong band to ring with! And that’s speaking as someone with a pretty decent financial position. Even beyond issues of affordability, I don’t think bellringing has £100-worth of enjoyment in the first year, at least for an up-front payment. The first year is spent not being able to ring with the rest of the band for some or all methods, and feeling a bit in the way. Depending on the band, there may or may not be a bit of a social life (pub, ringing tours, dinners etc.) but it is not a given. For young people, you may well not have anyone of your own age in the band, so it is not quite so socially-active from their perspective. I’m not saying it should be free, but we need to be realistic about what we have to offer.

Happy New Year, all! Need to be a bit more sober for my QP later today…

It seems that bells may go the same way. Is there a similar body to that which I have described above which can act, at least, as a clearing point? Keeping a watching brief for wherever redundant rings may find a new home, and preferably an active notification policy for what and where is available, is needed. — DRJA Dewar

Sounds like the Keltek Trust to me. They seem to be doing quite a good job so far, but I suppose they can only deal with a certain volume given the level of demand. @Roger Booth's prediction of people trading their bells for nicer rings sounds interesting - it sounds like now is the time to work through your Dove's guide if you're a tower grabber who goes after "interesting" bells...

Making the church more suitable for community use means that it will be heated and kept dry. A good alternative to selling it off. Getting back to the original issue of services in church halls, perhaps if the churches themselves were more flexible the churches could be retained as a combined hall and church, and flog off the new buildings? — J Martin Rushton

Our church had work in the last decade to allow its use for other events and make it easier to use for church purposes. Carpeting, pews, kitchen, toilets etc. Someone on the PCC told us that these days, it would have cost just shy of £1m. This was primarily cosmetic, with the structure being well-maintained and without serious defects. Costs for churches in needs of structural repairs will be higher still! Good luck getting that sort of money if you don't have a strong congregation. The new buildings tend to be more structurally-sound, easier to maintain and more suited to modern uses. When it comes to a toss-up between the church and the hall, economically it'll be the hall most times, even if the church holds more valuable. It is often taught in Christianity that the people and the word are more important than the building.

Insofar as it relates to ringing, we have to be prepared for a considerable reduction in the number of towers. What are the implications of considerably fewer towers for recruitment and retention? Where are the opportunities for relocated rings of bells, or will many be lost?

Impressive! We clearly don't need the forums - the AI can do it all for us :P

It depends where else the money could be used - augmentation can be right in some circumstances; but in others, improvements to the ringing room, a simulator, courses, teaching aides etc. could better. Also whether you will get good use out of them - there have been a few cases where a great deal of time and money has been spent on augmentation but 5 to 10 years later, there is no local band and the bells are silent.

This is a matter of great concern for me. As Simon says, we are chasing a shrinking market.

Amongst the university societies, I would be surprised if they overall have double figures of ethnic minority ringers. Given that universities and university societies are the most fertile ground for recruiting ringers from ethnic minorities, we clearly have a way to go.

When we were recruiting at our freshers' fair back in September, it was noticeable how many girls came forward to talk to us when we had girls on the stall, rather than just two stocky lads. Representation is important, and when people see people like them in promotional materials and on the ground, they are more likely to step forward. Once we break the initial barrier, then the increase in diversity is self-perpetuating.

The question is, how? Maybe any diversity we already have needs to be promoted, along with targeted outreach to community groups.

Alan, I don't think anyone has suggested any sort of imposition. Jason has suggested engaging with local groups to help them make changes locally, not some sort of national diktat.

We have to move forward as technology progresses Peter, whilst at the same time maintaining older technology for as long as it is reasonably practicable. I would say email is in danger, as is facebook, and we need to start moving forward into WhatsApp and Instagram... — Jason Carter

I wouldn't write off email just yet. It is the key to the internet, so everyone has at least one. And it has an appealing universality - you can get in touch with anyone no matter their email domain. WhatsApp and Instagram do not work in quite the same way. Facebook on the other hand is on its last legs. Ask most young ringers whether they have it or not, and most will say they got it just for ringing matters.

So which of these should I use to be sure that I can keep abreast of national & regional ringing topics? I'm afraid that from what I read in the press, both Whatsapp and rather more so, Instagram are badly tainted with inappropriate and pornographic material and I have no wish to become involved with either. Now that my 'Nigerian cousins' have stopped pestering me with details of the wealth allegedly awaiting me, I find emails quicker, safer and simpler to use. — Peter Sotheran

WhatsApp is effectively souped-up text messaging, enabling you to send media and be members of groups. I have used WhatsApp for more than a decade now, and I have yet to receive a single spam message and certainly no porn! If you aren't up for WhatsApp, that's fine but it will mean you are increasingly out of the loop. People are less willing to use emails for quick-fire conversations (as opposed to correspondence) than in the old days, and WhatsApp groups are very useful for bands/groups of officers. You use Facebook which has far more suspect content than Instagram and WhatsApp! If you can access Facebook, you can access Instagram without difficulty.

For those concerned about the future of ringing like me; it’s great to be at the NUA as I type, surrounded by young people who are passionate about ringing. Not all dark clouds on the horizon, thankfully.

we need leadership training for tower captains, District/Branch/Guild/Association ringing masters, chairs, PR and comms officers, webmasters etc. This would equip them with tools and help them be effective in their roles. There also need to be ways of sharing good practice and for this to find it's way down to the people who need it. — Roger Booth

There are plans in the works for leadership courses; it's just a question of finding the right people to run and deliver them and getting people to actually go on them. Anyone with appropriate experience and skills, now is your time...

The filters do transfer over. I think I have set it so that it now shows towers in alphabetical order by default.

I've also set up an Instagram account for the tower where I am TC, as I've been advised (by a young ringer) that Instagram is the most popular social media channel for young people (and to avoid TikTok). — Susan Hall

Yes, Instagram is a good way of reaching the young (and increasingly the not-so-young). TikTok is inadvisable unless it is a young person running it; it requires a very specific format and humour level to get engagement.

I guess the only answer is to create yet one more channel that will attract/embrace everyone - or is that what this forum was intended to do?? — Peter Sotheran

This reminds me of this comic:

For top down information nationally/internationally the cascade system via guilds and associations probably works moderately well but any breaks in the chain leave some at the bottom arift. — A J Barnfield

Yes, it is very much dependent on each of the guild/branch/tower officers sending the email down the chain. These days, simply passing it down directly to individual ringers from the association-level should be the default given the availability of tech and would be more reliable.

The CCCBR news letters is a helphere, going from top to bottom but there is no generalised system of going from bottom to top, or up to points inbetween. — A J Barnfield

How do you subscribe to the newsletters? I get emails for them but cannot work out for the life of me how I managed that. If we could make them easily accessible, then they would be a nice informal way of passing information down from the top.

Frankly, I don't know how we do it the other way round. You would hope that associations would make their officers easily contactable and approachable, and actively seek out feedback. The contact details for most of the CCCBR officials and workgroups are easily found on the website for the use of association officials and the general ringing community.

quote="A J Barnfield;d215"]Perhaps there is no ideal or solution here. Any nothing will work for those that are not interested in engaging. And perhaps we are stuck with fragmentation.[/quote]

I cant really decide whether the grassroots ringers that ↪A J Barnfield talks about don't want to communicate, or potentially worse, have so little awareness of the bigger picture that they don't even know anything exists if they did want to communicate up the chain. It is really down to how well educated ringers are by their teachers about the exercise as a whole. — Jason Carter

Yep, it is really up to us to get those under our leadership to take a wider interest in ringing - through taking them to district and association practices, tower grabs etc.

First, I must be having a 'blank' day - remind what CMO stands for please. — Peter Sotheran

I think Mr Barnfield means DMO - Direct Membership Organisation. The idea that all ringers could be members of the Central Council directly, rather than via affiliated societies.

As it is almost everywhere. I don't see how we can deliver the quality of training needed to retain and progress the responders to "Ring For The King". — John de Overa

There is no doubt that Ring for the King is a good initiative. But by not having a structured system with enough capacity to take ringers forward, I imagine it could be quite chaotic. People feeling pressured into teaching before they are ready not delivering a quality education. Learners not getting enough attention and giving up. Unrealistic expectations of the commitment to ringing. Hitting a wall when trying to progress to methods. Trying to rush people through to get to call changes in time for the coronation. Burnout of teachers. Ultimately, we could lose quite promising learners amongst the mêlée and burn through dedicated teachers and organisers. Probably too late to do much now if the cooperation and systems aren't already in place on the ground, but something to get in place before the next big drive (ring for the King 2.0?)

I think the concerns that Mary Jones (the Accidental Ringer) expresses on her blog are not without merit, and I wonder whether the sort of recruits will be the injection we need? A load of pensioners might not be ideal (fine if they are younger pensioners, but if we can't get a good many years out of them, can we afford the time, effort and money?) and neither would people who Ring for the King and then stop. We could do with a few more Marys, but even dedicated Sunday service ringers who are happy to get to a good quality of call changes or basic methods would be a good start.

Thanks for sharing this; it will be most helpful. Webforms are certainly a minefield - many places never seem to check whether they still work or go to the appropriate people.

One other wrinkle that occurred to me is that some towers are in more than one association, so some deduplication would be needed. — John de Overa

Yes, the data will need to be cleaned a little. In reality, as not all associations will survey at the same time, it could prove interesting to see changes over time. They just need to be identified as belonging to the same tower.

One significant change is the average age of ringers. One thing I am confident about is that the average age of ringers will not continue to increase indefinitely. — A J Barnfield

More through the laws of nature than efforts to turn the demographics around!

I don't think there is any excuse for not archiving digital copies of documents. The cost and storage space are minimal.

We’ve already seen a lot of correspondence from Yahoo groups and lots of other early email lists and forums disappear into the void. I would hope that we are protecting official email correspondence too.

That's an interesting point, but what would be attracting these people back? Presumably this is people who just live somewhere where they are fed up with the leadership of their local branch or district? Knowing that they could operate outside the existing 'system'? I have come across situations where people have thought they cannot organise some ringing because it was not in some way "approved". — Simon Linford

Well, I think in some instances, there has been hostility towards people doing their own thing from local associations or individual officers within said guilds. And yes, a misapprehension that things need to be done under the auspices of a formal organisation.

And the reason a lot of people have had issues with the association meetings wholly for procedural matters, any new ideas shot down instantly, stagnation in the leadership, the dreaded ‘annual training day’, the list goes on. If people had an organisation to just get on with the job with, then they could be attracted back to leadership and organisation.

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. — Lucy Chandhial

That's one of the structural issues with ringing - you need a thought leader at every tower to drive things forward; there simply aren't enough to go around (even perhaps only for towers with 10 bells or more). The tower leaders are probably the most important (and critical) people in ringing. We all need to be fostering leadership and organising skills, even at an early stage.

I’m forced to agree with you that it may be necessary to regroup to develop those skills at the towers where there is the most capacity to grow, then broaden coverage when we have significant numbers. A bit of focused energy at fewer towers could probably achieve more than spreading who we have too thinly across many towers to the detriment of quality mentoring.