Ringing Forums

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.

This is a start: https://dove.cccbr.org.uk/dove.csv?geo_region=1&bells=3%2B&ringable=1 — John de Overa

Unfortunately, the Dove dataset only goes down as far as association-level as far as publicly available data goes. @Simon Linford if you could ask the Dove stewards, that'd be great. Otherwise, if the Steward & Management or Historical & Archive workgroups don't hold such data, then I suspect such a dataset doesn't exist. In which case, we would have to compile a dataset by requesting information from associations and merging it with the Dove dataset.

The other thing that would be of interest is tower contact details, but I suspect that might have to be obtained directly from Associations, and that might have data protection constraints. The other option would be to scrape it from association websites, where the details are public. — John de Overa

Well, if we are using local officers, then they would be contacting their own tower contacts who will have consented to being contacted by their local guild. Otherwise, individuals could probably use annual reports etc. of their own associations. Either way, it's not going to be the Central Council asking. It will be local individuals asking people to contribute to a national project.

Yet another reason for a direct membership organisation :wink: — John de Overa

Quite! Finding the appropriate information looks like it might be quite fun....

I’d be happy to be a guinea pig for a survey with the Middlesex Association N&E district if that helps (despite being fairly small and urban so not the most challenging area). — Lucy Chandhial

Thanks, Lucy, I'll keep that under consideration. I suspect the N&E would be suitable as one of three trial areas for the survey; we need an "easy" area because it may have its own challenges which might not be found in dissimilar areas.

I have recently discovered through my own work with my local guild that if you use Google Forms as a way of eliciting information, the responses received can be automatically added to a google sheets spreadsheet - and once it is set up it is live and any future responses get automatically added also.
It is an easy matter to send a link to the Form to mass recipients on an emailing list - many Guilds/Associations have them. I do appreciate tha this will not necessarily reach the traditionally unreachable, but maybe it would be a start. — Rebecca Banner

Even for the ‘off grid’ towers there is usually someone who has some contact and can give an idea of the size of the band, ringing standards and frequency of ringing. — Lucy Chandhial

Yes, I've found Google forms to be quite nifty over the years. All the central team would have to do is create a copy of the form for the district, then send the link to the district/branch to work their magic. There is a function to create a printable version of the form, which district officials could send to those who are off the grid. District officers could then input them back into the e-form. Alternatively, this could be done as a telephone interview; whatever suits local needs.

We do have a complete database of towers, and can map those to the smallest unit of organisation that they are in. — Simon Linford

So do we have details of the towers in each district and branch?

Without paid staff, would the workload of the volunteers lead to burnout?

Now there are signs that the number of peals and qps might not recover to pre pandemic levels. — A J Barnfield

I suspect next year is the one to look out for. First year without the short-term effects of Covid-19 and with things back to normal. Yes, there are factors such as a recession, but we have spent the last 14 years at least lurching from one crisis to another; we probably have to accept that there will always be an underlying supression of numbers for an ever-changing cocktail of reasons.

I think the median ringer has probably been ringing CCs for a long time already, the question is if they have a desire to progress beyond that? And what proportion of ringers actually aspire to ringing peals, or is it of interest only to a small but highly visible section of the ringing community? — John de Overa

The extent of desire for progress would definitely be something worth considering for inclusion in the survey.

I think that entirely depends on what you want to find out. There's inevitably going to be a degree of bias from TCs. No TC is going to say "I have no clue how to run things, my ringers are pissed off, many are going to quit and my tower is on its last legs". — John de Overa

We will have to consider this very carefully. It may need a separate section where it clearly indicated that tower-level information will not be seen by anyone else other than the survey team, and such information will only be presented on a district level.

I am inclined to agree with John that it would be good to contact each individual ringer. But we don't have any obvious workable system for that. Random sampling would be a possibility but obtaining a random sample, free of bias, would, I think, be difficult. — A J Barnfield

I can't see a way to do it. There is no data for us to create a stratified sampling method, and engaging with those individuals selected as part of the sample would be so difficult as to create sampling bias.

I also agree that the range of questions and those surveyed needs to be much narrower in scope than the 1988 survey. — A J Barnfield

Without having sight of the survey report (which I suggest is required for this project to progress), I would not be able to comment on whether it should be narrower. But certainly we will need to balance the aid of completion with the reality that this will be the only opportunity to collect anything near a comprehensive dataset for ringing - this is a rare opportunity.

I think we should also try to get a feel for levels of experience and capacity to provide continuing T&D. — A J Barnfield

Yes, it is unfortunate that the supply of ringers is not readily considered to include the supply of teachers and trainers. This could also be integrated into a potential future survey of associations.

Is the branch/district structure robust enough to achieve that these days?

Do we need to run some sort of stress test to see if the existing Guld/Association, district/branch set up would be able to collect the data? — A J Barnfield

I don't think formally tying it to guilds and associations is necessarily desireable. They are quite varied groups; some would approach the task with vim and vigour, others would be apathetic and not really get it done, and others yet might oppose it for any number of reasons. Associations however bring with them what should be a good ready-made team with the knowledge of their areas and the resources to carry out the task. Therefore, guilds would be the optimum medium, but in lieu of them, local individuals could be brought together to form a team. There would definitely need to be a guild-by-guild audit of capabilities before we leave the data collection in their hands.

I guess you would need to pick a small selection of branches with differing profiles - for example the N.Yorks branch of the YACR is largely rural and covers an area greater than the entire Kent ACR! Compare this with the districts based in large urban centres. Very different profiles and, I imagine, very different results. — Peter Sotheran

Certainly in terms of the primary focus of the team, that would be good to ensure at least some indicative data, with the contributions of others filling in the picture further. YACR's Leeds, Western, Central and Sheffield branches struck me as an interesting location to survey, as well as being an area where I have contacts and a basic understanding of the geography.

I think it would need help from the associations - as a rank & file ringer I get regular emails from three I ring in, but admittedly that route is only going to reach those of us that are members. The Facebook ringing groups are another route to individuals - both the "regular" ones, the association specific ones and the ones where the learners hang out. As you say it's going to be difficult to get a truly random sample, but perfect is the enemy of good, as they say :smile: — John de Overa

The CCCBR's strategic priorities are couched in terms of the needs and aspirations of individual ringers, which I think is right. If you want to find out what individual ringers think then you need to ask them. That should be possible for a reasonable subset via existing association contact mechanisms - email, Facebook etc, but I realise that's not easy. However a workplace employee survey that only asked managers how things are going would be unlikely to accurately reflect the views of employees. — John de Overa

I think there is a danger of trying to do too much in a single project. I think it is probably prudent to separate quantitative data (which urgently needs comprehensive sampling to get decent data) and qualitative data (where acquiring themes means that getting a comprehensive sample is not as urgent - we can stratify based on the results of the quant. data). Trying to get a comprehensive sample is easier with a known quantity (towers) as opposed to an unknown quantity (ringers). I can't see a way to get to a good enough sample of individuals for quant. analysis without a bias towards prosperous towers and learners on ART, short of a firm being paid to take on the task.

Congratulations! I am not on the Central Council but I would be very happy to assist you. — Jason Carter

Membership of the Central Council is definitely not a prerequisite for helping out with CC projects!

Not sure what 'tools' Simon is thinking about, however, I think excel could deliver on this with a small amount of manual intervention required... but if there is a more sophisticated way to collect the data then I'm very happy to embrace that instead. Either way, the next collection of data will be significantly easier to achieve than the 1988 exercise, which must have been a considerable challenge for those involved!! — Jason Carter

Excel is a decent format for questions; there are also a number of online survey tools which can directly feed into a spreadsheet.

If you can then expand that by Territorial Association (60 odd...?) then you would have a complete picture. — Jason Carter

Something to aspire to, certainly. Even an incomplete picture would give a great insight into the current situation, and a format which allows continual additions to the dataset would be a boon.

The 1988 survey asked five different groups: TC's, Incumbents, Individual ringers, branches and associations. I think this was too much and that TC's is all we need to approach. They just need to be honest and work with their band. Does anyone have a different opinion on this view? — Jason Carter

I think any examination of associations and guilds would be more relevant to a separate project examining societies specifically, perhaps linked more directly to Ringing 2030. We also need to avoid bogging the project down too much with too many features, as it increases the pressure on those leading it and takes away the focus from the core objectives. TCs would be more than sufficient.

Can anyone think of different questions that need to be asked at the "macro" (big picture) level?

I can't. — Jason Carter

The macro can be extracted from the micro, and the spatial analysis can be multi-level, to get a picture of ringing in an area. No need for macro questions in this project.

Returning to the method of collection, I think excel could cope with all of the data (and I still need to test this at a small level). And excel is "relatively" straightforward for most people to use. A more sophisticated system may require some assistance from a smaller group of people to gather the information that we are trying to collect. — Jason Carter

.csv files can be used to produce maps, graphs and charts, so is probably the best format to use.. We could provide online e-forms to be sent to towers and e-forms which could be used for the easy input of paper forms by the local reps. It wouldn't take much on our end, and it would make the local side of things simple even for those with a fairly basic level of computer literacy.

But surely those towers still belong to an association ** if only by geography ** somewhere...

So a channel of communication remains, even if membership is not "up to date"

Whoever is doing the review "on their patch" needs to find a way of talking to all of the towers in their area, whether that is via email, letter, or turning up to a local practice night. — Jason Carter

Yes, it may require a three phase approach; firstly emails to all towers with emails, chased up with phone calls if necessary. Any towers with radio-silence would then get a letter or two, with the final resort being a local rep turning up on a practice night or service ringing session. Throughout this, it's important that it's a local person doing this so that the process is more personal and more likely to get a response. No members does not mean no activity - @Peter Sotheran mentioned on another thread that 42% of Yorkshire Association towers do not have a single member, and many others have very few members based on a flick through of the latest annual report.

You can start your own peal band - I did many years ago, after consulting an eminent conductor, and we went on to ring many esoteric minor methods; even naming one after our "D-Band" (so-called because we were not good enough for the "A-Band" :-) ! — Nick Lawrence

Often, getting stuck in and DIY is the best way to get something done. But ringing even at the lower levels relies on a great deal of self-motivation. If you have to fight your way through to ringing peals, it's hardly an incentive to take it up, is it? And putting together a willing peal band may be quite difficult; even getting people together for QPs is reportedly becoming more challenging in a number of areas.

I'd be a little cautious about reading too much into that map - I know of at least 3 towers in the Greater Manchester area that have simulators and aren't on the map. — John de Overa

Ah, the usual 'no-one thought to update Dove' issue. Another thing for Central Council Operatives to do when they get sent into the field :wink:

I've been thinking about doing this too. The two things that have been holding me back are: 1.the belief that something central is coming, and 2. what questions to ask?

Would it be worth pooling resources to get a good set of survey questions that could be asked, that anyone could then use locally? Then this could be used as frequently as individuals wanted to, and if a database comes down the road, no-doubt some volunteers will come forward to populate it with anything already gathered. — Jason Carter

1. I have a suspicion that the something central might end up being me, as I have recently been appointed to lead the Intelligence section of the Central Council Volunteer & Liaison workgroup. Certainly not a one-man job, though, so I should be grateful for volunteers to assist.

2. I imagine the main things we’ll want to find out are: the number of ringers, the skill level of ringers, their age profile, their geographical distribution, whether they ring in multiple towers, frequency of practice and service ringing, and additional teaching facilities (like simulators).

Getting towers to respond is enough of a task in itself, without trying to get individuals to respond. For any area, it needs to be comprehensive as @Simon Linford says so we have an accurate picture of ringing in an area. Really, it needs to be strongly supported by local officials or 'big names' who have the clout with tower officials in their area to get responses out of them.

Perhaps best done by visits to towers? I know some surveys have been done this way before. Perhaps anyone who has been involved in doing it this way could comment? — A J Barnfield

Interesting, but time and labour intensive - one of my proposed areas for study has 188 towers! It could also seem like the Central Council is sending out spies or inspectors :lol:

And of course the "tower band" is a bit of a vague concept given the amount of clustering and helping out that goes on. — A J Barnfield

Any survey would probably need an open text field to describe local arrangements and 'helping out'.

Previous work also highlighted the need for more use of initial informal discussions face to face with a few people with different experiences, to understand how they would interpret the questions. This then needs to be followed by a small scale pilot survey to make sure that the responses can be analysed appropriately and will produce meaningful results, before going further. — Alison Hodge

This project would need the involvement of the V&L Red Team (they are tasked with investigating how ideas would go down with the wider ringing public and other ringing organisations).

Some of the CC Ringing Centres are still shown as such on Dove. Was there ever anything done with entries once they were added?

I think there is certainly room for a classification system for towers, perhaps with three levels, to indicate the facilities and people-power the tower has to provide for learners (Enhanced, Hub, and Centre, with other towers being Standard?) Certainly, many towers don't have facilities to teach, and places where teaching could be developed then skills planted out to other towers locally would be valuable.

Take a look at this map from Dove, showing the locations of simulators. Some pretty major gaps, even in the major metropolises where they could have a large customer base. This doesn't even account for the fact that some simulators are rarely used. Perhaps a classification scheme would encourage the development of facilities? It would need to be backed up by annual self-assessments and periodical inspections to keep the classification scheme reliable.

For those that kept going what were the factors that kept them going for any that did not why not? — A J Barnfield

I would be very interested to hear the answer to this.

I think the Median ringer overall can ring Bob Minor - nothing more. I can't remember how I worked that out as it was some time ago, but I am sure it's about right. So not surprising that the median ringer overall has not rung a peal. — Simon Linford

Quite. The attitude seems to vary from tower to tower, but the three broad attitudes I have experienced are:

1. a QP is a bog-standard event,
2. others where the senior ringers ring QPs sometimes but for the rest it's a special event, rarely occuring, and
3. where a QP is something distant and other-wordly.

For most of the above, the most 'advanced' might do peals on the odd occasion, but for the rest it barely registers as a concept, let alone something to even be aspired to. I'm not in the right circles to really get a handle on how many prolific peal and QP ringers there are out there, but they are probably not many in number, and concentrated in certain areas.

You have to be in the right area and in with the right crowd to get into QPs and peals, and a pre-requisite is quite a lot of self-drive to seek out opportunities. More people might get involved if there was a natural progression and an environment where people could be persuaded over time to progress.