Ringing Forums

I think this does happen, but it depends on where you ring and how proactive you are to find / take opportunities to keep learning.
There is lots on the internet to go to if you want to see a potential path and read around the subject of method construction or similar. Many experienced ringers enjoy nothing more than a curious less experienced ringer who will listen as they explain something detailed about next steps in method ringing.
I think we don’t have a continuous learning culture in bellringing overall, there is a level of acceptance that many people reach a stage which is comfortable for them and the band they ring with so there is no further push unless either the ringer or the tower captain keeps a push for continuous progress.
This then means that for those who do want to keep progressing finding like minded ringers to ring with and more experienced ringers to support gradually requires travelling further and further.
The Cast of 1000 demonstrated this to a reasonable extent, with some lockdown ringing room sessions but a real difficulty in transferring to tower ringing to support surprise major development.

I know a couple of towers which avoid spending too much time on doubles and prefer to get ringers used to minor as quickly as possible, plain hunt and beyond. The Learning the Ropes scheme offers options to head in either direction and I think this is sensible because it does depend on the band around you.
@Martyn Bristow points out that for a learner in his band it would be tough to reach readiness for a quarter, let alone a peal, this is a definite issue in some areas and raises the question of how well people can be supported if the only option is to travel further for less frequent opportunities for developmental ringing.

The middle third - which I suppose is the one Simon is concerned about - is those ringers who could be quite good if given the chance to ring with really good ringers.

I think this is the main concern for many of the threads on this forum.
There is a reasonable size group of ringers spread across the country (world) who would like more opportunities to ring with ringers more experienced than them so that they can progress in a better development environment but there are not enough experienced ringers to go around and many of them are not that interested in ringing to support the progress of others (sometimes because they have experienced ringing with ringers who are not particularly keen to improve their ringing and then that’s frustrating).
Some people experience this inability to progress efficiently at plain hunt, for others it comes in surprise ringing or ringing on higher numbers and for some it comes when wanting to ring quarters or peals. In all cases it’s about the availability and willingness of experienced ringers to support those developing their skills and a gradual decline in the numbers of experienced ringers means that more and more new ringers will hit this frustration.
We can try to persuade experienced ringers to give their time to ringers who commit to doing their homework and focusing on high quality ringing but we also need to think about how ringers and bands can progress with simulators, regional courses, etc and some of this is already happening but there is no quick and simple answer for the ideal opportunity to ring with a strong band around you for fast progress.

We have a keen experienced conductor who likes to get people through their first peal! But I appreciate this is different to the regular peal band opportunities.
A few years ago the Central Council made a push for getting 300 (?) new people to ring a peal in a year. He got 8 people to ring their first peal that year.
On the other hand one of the most prolific peal ringers local to us rang many more peals that year but none with someone for whom it was a first peal. So perhaps you need that first opportunity with someone who’s target is to support ringers development and that helps you prove readiness to join some of the experienced peal ringing bands for a peal or two.

@John de Overa says “ There's been posts on here recently about the parlous state of many associations, even the mighty Yorkshire is struggling. Duplicating the same services across multiple associations is a poor use of scarce resources and there's no justification for continuing that situation, other than the inertia of the associations themselves.”
Which suggests that he would ‘nationalise’ (or even globalise) the ringing set up so that a ringer has one membership, one website to check for tower info and practice info, one fund for Bell Restoration (and perhaps another for training), etc.
All the volunteer time currently invested in the many Associations and Guilds would be available for ringing, teaching, developing other ringers as it takes less time to administrate one giant organisation than 30+ smaller ones.
However, what we tend to see in human nature is a desire to interact and to innovate in smaller groups. So big organisations find that individual departments or offices invent their own ‘better’ or more suited to them ways of doing things and lose some of the imagined efficiency (or lose some of the motivation to act). It becomes very hard to reach agreement on a way forward or to find a solution that works for everyone in a larger organisation so people set up smaller groups within the organisation to modify the standard to suit them and efficiency fades.
Crag looked at many models and saw potential but many people don’t want to ‘give away’ control to a single national / global organisation as they don’t feel it would consider their local / particular needs (and to some extent they are right as you only get the efficiency by standardising to at least some extent).
I don’t think that is inertia, I think it is a considered choice and would require some very convincing work to demonstrate how a single organisation would bring benefit to change people’s minds.

I was asked the other day why we don’t use Dove as the one website for tower information, including tower contacts. I think a major reason is that the chasing it takes locally to ensure the contact information is accurate would become very difficult on a national scale. So each Association maintains their own website with tower contact information and Dove simply links to these sites (on the best ones direct to the relevant tower page). Every year I ask 40 tower contacts to confirm that their information is accurate and need to chase around 15 to get an answer. If this was multiplied up to become a global task it becomes near to impossible (or it becomes a stretched out chain that each Association / Branch contact is asked to chase within their area but someone still needs to know when the task is completed per Association / Branch).
Associations have different views on publishing tower contacts emails and phone numbers vs. using generic email addresses or contact forms so Dove would need to be able to handle these differences or people would need to accept a standard approach.
This is just one example where in theory a single approach would help but isn’t a silver bullet.

Switching from local to national doesn’t straightforwardly reduce the workload and we haven’t yet found (as far as I can see) an area to demonstrate the benefit of the global organisation which would convince people in local Associations to consider converting to a direct membership model with the efficiency which comes from one website, one membership process, one treasurer ensuring financial stability, etc.

I think @Phillip George is right that ringing the bells probably doesn’t make any difference to church attendance and I too ring before services because I enjoy ringing but I also agree with @Alan C that it would be dishonest to try to disconnect it completely.
I know lots of ringers who manage this little tension as a non religious ringer but I do think it influences how we recruit because we do need to be respectful of the church as the owner of the bells.

I think it is not unknown and not completely ignored but declining attendance in churches which have bells (C of E mainly) is also a factor which we struggle to relate to bellringing recruitment.
100 years ago most people went to church and bellringing was an option seen and heard by the congregation.
At some point in the 1980’s (ish, I think) ringing became popular with people who were not religious but enjoyed the patterns involved in methods and proving new methods or peals with computing technology which created a fresh influx of ringers at University age. This is something I’ve been told so feel free to correct me.
That level of recruitment didn’t continue and so we have a population of religious ringers and a population of non religious ringers and both are getting older and now we struggle with how to present ringing as an activity to non religious people (let alone people from other religions) to boost numbers without being disrespectful to the church which provides the bells.
I know a few ringers (like me) who are not entirely comfortable with ‘calling people to service’ to a religion which can be criticised for its attitude to some people and topics within the community.
There is a fine line to tread in recruitment and the relationship with the church as increasingly we need to recruit non religious people whilst respecting the church as host of the bells.

It is definitely a good idea to go to a range of different practices and see which ones can offer you opportunities to develop and which less so. Most people ring at whichever tower is most convenient for them geographically but many also go to one or more other practices either most weeks or once a month and this variety can be very useful. So you don’t necessarily need to leave your current main tower but it is a good idea to join other practices and talk about what you would like to ring.
If you ask your tower captain for a chat about your ringing development, as a one to one chat outside of a busy practice, would you be able to have an honest conversation about what you would like to ring and why you don’t get given the opportunity? Maybe they don’t realise how important it is to you to keep learning new things, maybe they feel that you need to improve something in handling or striking before you can ring more complicated methods, maybe they think people should always learn to ring Kent before they ring Cambridge. Without talking about the gap between what you want and what you get it is hard to know whether you could get more of what you want where you are.

I agree, but there are many people in bellringing who are leading practices and teaching who don’t have specific teaching skills. I was trying to provide context related to the question posed, not saying that this is right.

Whilst one to one tuition helps a lot this learner probably has a strong aptitude for the kind of pattern learning needed for ringing. There is a virtuous circle that can happen when someone responds well to advice and tuition, because it clicks for them as a way to learn and then the teacher finds it rewarding to help them and so on.
Different ringers have different ways of learning and thinking about ringing and (similar to the workplace) it can be that an experienced ringer finds it rewarding to help a less experienced ringer who thinks in a similar way to them, it makes it easy for them to help the learner to make progress.
This is along the lines of unconscious bias and is quite common in many areas in life.
You can try to have an open conversation with the tutor to ask whether you too could have more one to one tuition, or more opportunities to practice your next skill and you might get some constructive feedback on what they think you need to work on to make the next steps, etc.
But you might also find it helps to talk to other experienced ringers who you see regularly and see if there is someone who approaches learning in ringing in a similar way to you, who might find it easy to relate to your learning style and therefore be able to offer you tuition which has faster success for you.

People do learn differently and at different speeds, and you see this clearly in ringing, so don’t be too concerned about the progress of another ringer but do ask what you need to do to be given more chances to practice what you are learning.

I think asking ringers to make a donation as part of a weekly practice, towards the future maintenance of the bells or tea and biscuits, etc is fairly normal and generally very inexpensive.
I think charging £5+ each week would start to exclude some people who enjoy ringing but could not afford to join two or more practices a week at that kind of cost.
But my main concern with the original suggestion of a course which costs £10 per week so that the leader(s) of the course get paid at wedding type rates is that you then have to define who is helping and who is learning and I think in many weekly practices there are people who join and by doing so bring strength and support to the band but do not expect to be paid to be there, but certainly wouldn’t want to pay to join in.
I regularly collect donations from ringers on outing, at district practices and for meetings with a prepared tea and I am very conscious that whilst some people happily offer more money and don’t want change for some others making the donation has an impact on their budget for the week. With a suggested donation it can be quietly handled that some people give less but once you start setting a charge it becomes harder for people to say that they would like to join in but can’t and you risk changing the demographics.
But this is just my view and I know towers and associations will try different things and see what they learn in the process and the majority of ringers can happily donate or pay more for ringing opportunities, especially when it is structured to benefit their level of skill and experience.

for my own part, yes, I am new to having taken on a CCCBR workgroup role so there are lots of things I don’t know yet and I have limited spare time so progress will be gradual.
My sister recently told me that volunteering is a frustrating experience because you get nothing for it but still get all the criticism of a professional and I know that this is a barrier to getting people to take on responsibilities to try to tackle difficult situations.
Working in one tower you can make a manageable difference fairly quickly, extending to a district I find I achieve less or there are more people still dissatisfied with the practices and outings organised, taking it to the international level where there are few avenues for easy communication makes it even harder to know what people want and then to meet those needs (with a specific remit and limited volunteer capacity) so I’m taking my time to find my way and using everything from Facebook, the RW, these forums and the many ringers I talk to through ringing to learn.
My first effort was promoting National Volunteers Week and one of my learnings from that is that it’s not easy to get ideas from CCCBR to individual tower contacts or ringers.

I agree that at the moment Ringing 2030 is not a clear vision which all Associations or all towers can consider and then start to build into but I think this is part of what is planned.
Lots of towers are already doing a lot and finding ways to gather those examples and share the news on what works well is important. Currently I see this mainly in Ringing World articles, Facebook posts, etc rather than in a structured way which makes it easy for people to search and find ideas to fit their tower needs. This definitely falls into my intention in Leadership Information (but obviously with a focus on ‘leadership’ rather than recruitment, etc. I think volunteers in every workgroup area are aiming to make it easier for towers, districts, guilds, etc to learn from each other and be more successful but I also think there will always be multiple views on the best way to do this.

I think this is when it gets really hard because many ringers are already close to providing this service, simply by attending a weekly practice at an ‘extra’ tower where they bring the strength (and sometimes the structure) to enable that band to develop and practice in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
If this becomes a ‘course’ and people get paid for it (and the ringers pay £10 per week to attend) it changes the dynamic of the practice and might make others question why they are offering a very similar service for ‘free’ (or even donating £1 each week to the tower fund for giving their time and skills).
Many ringers would then have to decide that they couldn’t afford to join in, £10 a week is still quite a lot for many, unless the church or association were part funding it.
Ten weeks later the band are back to being on their own again and with a funding model like this it’s harder to ‘invite’ more experienced ringers to come along whenever they can because there is now an in built expectation that their support costs £50 a practice night.
I can see the intention, I can see that this could help some bands a lot but I also think that many people are offering very close to this service for free and people might pull away from offering their support for free if they see others earning cash in hand wedding style money for the same support.
Providing the structure of the course would be very useful, although as likely to be from ART as the CCCBR, but getting into paying people to provide the teaching vs volunteers providing their support at local practices could become difficult on a national / international scale.

I agree, there are definite overlaps in the existing plan.
It’s on my to do list (in the Leadership Education part of the V&L workgroup (currently changing its name to Recruitment & Development)) to check what ART does cover about volunteering to take on leadership responsibilities and to research what materials already exist to give people confidence to take on roles like tower captain or steeple keeper with confidence. I have no intention of creating new information when information already exists.
But I think the working relationship and responsibility split between the Central Council workgroups and ART could be more clearly defined (which might only be because I’m still new to being in a workgroup).

I think it would be helpful to have a clear agreement and definition about what ART aims to deliver and can therefore take responsibility for so that the CCCBR can avoid duplicating these topics. I get the impression that the CCCBR feels the need to be set up for everything because ART is an independent organisation so can’t be relied upon forever.
ART did a good (but not perfect) job of connecting potential learners to towers with teachers in Ring for the King and ART does a very good job of teaching people to teach in a supported way so that more towers can confidently take on new learners.
Some kind of five year agreement between the two organisations would be very useful but probably requires the CCCBR to offer something to ART, whether that is finance or simply clarity that it will point would be teachers to ART for their courses and promote ART within bellringing.

if we were to fund teaching, and pay people to teach new ringers, this would require a very different approach to finances and bring huge costs to the learner (presumably, perhaps with some scholarship type funding) which would change the whole dynamic in ringing from community hobby to something like music lessons leading to playing in an orchestra.
This is of course an option but I don’t get the impression that this is the aim of Ringing 2030.
If we assume paid people would be, generally, in administrative and organisational roles then we still need ringers to be willing to teach new ringers, practice together to support those with less experience and offer training opportunities at a variety of levels in their leisure time (perhaps with a better concept of claiming expenses for travel) so we don’t get round the major stumbling block we have for new learners today.
We may want / need to persuade Brian from Bodmin (and the many others like him) that if they don’t want to come to extra practices occasionally to help less experienced ringers progress then their hobby will be lost to future generations and that it is worth a little extra effort to prevent this. That would be a very different internal publicity campaign but perhaps it is worth some energy / funding.

and…. A lot of this will probably rely on local Associations and Guilds (or alternative local structures) to make it possible so it is questionable whether increased funding for central organisation is the key to delivering the support most ringers want locally.
Potentially the affiliate fees rising is only a minor cost increase really and local structures will also need to think seriously about funding if they really want to be able to offer the opportunity to progress to surprise Major in a supported environment for ringers who want to do so with less than a one hour travel time to the practice.
I still find it hard to decide whether money is what is needed as actually so much of what we do relies on people choosing to invest their time and money can’t always change this.

At the Middlesex Association insurance is currently our biggest single expense, ten times the cost of the current affiliate fees. So it does seem something work looking at.

I have just read the information on the CCCBR website about the Ringing 2030 funding proposals.

Maybe the assumption is that the Council need to fund year one for the SW course and the course fees paid that year enable the organisation of the next year and so on, so it’s a one off starting point which enables it to self fund from then on? But I agree it is not clearly explained.

I agree that Associations and Guilds probably will need / want to use their own funds to support recruitment and training locally as part of Ringing 2030. I suppose the question is how much difference it makes to Association funds if the affiliate fee is doubled from 20p to 40p when subs are usually £8 or £10 per adult member so it is still a small percentage.

In general ringing is a very inexpensive hobby so most people probably wouldn’t mind being asked to pay higher subs each year, but it is definitely true that the AGM set up in each Association means it takes time to make any changes.

I notice the Rolls of Honour commitment is noted as a spend but I see no obvious income to fund this, yet I know that we have been asked to donate specifically for this purpose. I wonder whether the Central Council could do more to request specific donations, even monthly donations, towards specific topics and activities so that those ringers who want to invest, can afford to invest and feel they will see benefit can choose to support efforts.
That way the £1 per ringer in 2030 as an affiliate fee can ‘keep the lights on’, including a paid administrator, but there will be additional funding for targeted topics like publicity, recruitment drives, etc from those who actively choose to offer financial support.

My local Association gives nearly half its income to the BRF in an ordinary year and affiliate fees are a tiny proportion of our expenses. So it wouldn’t be a real problem financially, but I think there is some work to do to show the value of the Central Council work as so many ringers have no active contact with Central Council work beyond a Ring for the King logo.

I think the challenge comes here: ‘making sure they contribute along the way to the Associations’.
The struggle appears to be that many ringers are happy to ring, enjoy ringing, will turn up for practices, outings, peals, etc but are not willing to put any time into organisation of ringing (ranging from bell maintenance to finances, calendars, publicity of events through to teaching future ringers).
One option seems to be to let people pay and then pay people to take on the organising, this works for an individualistic society (as in the original post).
The other option is to encourage people to give their time to playing a role for a given number of years so that everyone does contribute to the organising at some stage and therefore we don’t run out of (or burn out) our organisers. This is probably harder to do if it is true that more and more people are thinking individualistically and not interested in or motivated by community values.

Bellringing is currently 99% volunteer organisers with a handful of exceptions working for ART and the St Clements ringing centre.
We pay for skilled bell maintenance (and even there often make use of volunteer labour to reduce costs) for the bigger projects but nearly everything else is done with free labour on a voluntary basis.

The question is whether we have enough community minded volunteers who are happy to take on the organisational roles and currently, looking at reports and feedback from many Associations, we don’t. We have vacancies in posts, people with more than one post who would rather do less and districts or branches where nothing is organised for the ringers because no one wants to do the organising.

This could lead to big change, do things differently to need less volunteers to organise or change the way it is done so more people feel able to take on smaller tasks or roles with set time periods or ask AI to use last year’s calendar as a guide and organise the next year’s district practices for you! But right now it seems, in at least some areas, to simply be leading to a gradual fade out of opportunities with towers becoming silent and districts or branches organising less and this is a shame.

Definitely people are different and have time to support at different stages of life but the model currently relies on people willing to do extra for nothing and that’s an increasingly tough model to work with in a busy world where people have all sorts of opportunities and demands on them.

To answer @Barbara Le Gallez’s question…
I think you probably need to define very clear roles with annual ‘elections’ or transfer of roles and make clear for these new learners (once established) that they will need to choose which role to take on once they’ve been ringing for two years (or three years, your choice) so that it is a natural expectation that part of ringing is that you will be in charge of the email inbox for a year or in charge of finding wedding ringers for a year or asked to organise the summer outing or however you break down the tasks.
That might be the best way to ensure they are equipped to run the tower in ten, twenty or thirty years time.