Ringing Forums

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can't. — Jason Carter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We don't know what the ringing population is because we don't collect data in anything approaching a statistically meaningful way. We can guess. — A J Barnfield

We also might be able to do something about the replacement rate, ensuring that we can at least suitably replace everyone who steps down from leadership and organisation.

In central government there have been numerous attempts to solve problems with restructures. These normally eased problems in some areas, but then created all new problems in others. What they always failed to address was that the capabilities and resources of those within any of the structures didn’t change merely because they’ve been restructured. — Alan C

It seems that correspondents in towns and cities are depressed because they see their bands declining in skill: perhaps they can no longer ring Surprise Major. Whereas correspondents in country areas are delighted because they see church & village communities kept flourishing by people who can only ring plain hunt. — Barbara Le Gallez

A strong and committed territorial association (Ely Diocesan Association of Church Bell Ringers), providing training and support.
A few public-spirited Spliced Surprise Maximus ringers who are not too proud to roll up their sleeves and teach basic bell handling to the same person for a very large number of weeks and months. You know who you are!
A larger number of decent ringers who enjoy pitching in and being part of a big group that works for the benefit of all. — Barbara Le Gallez