Ringing Forums

“I think Roger might be over estimating the degree of attachment to service ringing. It is what we have all grown up with as the dominant form of performance, so we accept it as normal, but that doesn't mean they identify with it. I took a straw poll of what ringers would do if ringing at their church ceased and the options available were: (a) ring at a secular tower, (b) travel some distance to a church with service ringing or (c) give up•. Of the 30 people who replied 80% said they would ring at a secular tower rather than travel to find service ringing.”
I’m confused! Roger was quoting your assumption that ringers are attached to doing something for the church rather than the art of ringing and he was aiming to demonstrate that many ringers don’t think about service ringing (or ringing for the church) as key.
Now you are replying to say he is overestimating the importance of church and that your straw poll reflects that people like ringing as a local activity over and above as a church activity!

I think you are both right that for many people ringing now service ringing is an expected habit but not a key driver and many ringers would very happily come ringing every week at a secular tower.

“One thing that stands out to me is that in the grouping that's successful, mobility of ringers is the norm from the very start. To me that has all sorts of benefits, is that something that happens in your area?”
In some towers.
I find this interesting because some people like to teach in their tower and keep their band with them to ring their way or progress the way they lead them and for many of the people involved this works very well and these are some of the most successful towers locally.
Others are much happier to encourage learners to go to other towers too, often because they or one of their band regularly go to that same other tower so you get networks with some cross over of ringers which can help people to progress faster. Some of these towers are bands which struggle for numbers or struggle for experience so visit other practices regularly for the opportunity to stretch their own skills but if they then encourage learners to come along too there is a crossover benefit and progress can improve.
Generally people don’t start joining other practices until they can ring in rounds and often it is when they reach plain hunt that they want to get more than one opportunity a week to practice their skills.

Second bugbear, unconsciously denigrated ringers by using ‘just’ or ‘only’ before an activity. E.G. they can only ring rounds, we’re just going to ring call changes.
One experienced ringer near us has banned the use of ‘just’ for exactly that reason, when you ringing called changes it’s not ‘just’ called changes for at least one of the ringers!

In the area where I ring it is assumed that all learners are working towards method ringing, even if some might only choose simple method ringing (and some experienced ringers are still practicing how to treble to doubles). Not every tower practice can manage plain hunting and beyond but every tower band is aiming to get there.
I see younger learners developing faster through the skills and therefore moving on more quickly (often) compared to an older learner who joins the same number and variety of practices but I don’t see older learners being ignored or held back or assumed to be not interested in extending their skills.
I do see some older experienced ringers who have actively chosen not to extend their skills beyond a certain point and others who feel ‘stuck’ at a certain stage, especially if they don’t have time to visit other practices alongside their home tower.
I think we have a good culture (where I am) of working towards a first quarter covering, a quarter trebling, a quarter inside, etc and a path from plain hunt to trebling to ringing inside which lets people move into method ringing so that they can take it as far as they like.
Ringing ‘press’ has celebrated both young learners and older learners achieving impressive goals so I don’t think anyone should feel held back by age.
It is definitely true that supporting ringers (of any age) to extend their skills is time intensive for the ringers around them and I know you have talked before about how more could be done with simulator sessions and online trainings to help bridge the gap when the chance to ring with a band is hard to arrange.
I would be interested to better understand at what point people hit the limit of local support in different areas because where I am it becomes difficult when you want a supportive band for surprise major but I understand that in some areas of the country it’s already difficult to get the chance to ring bob minor with a stable band around you.

@Tina@Vicki Chapman will the CCCBR coordinate the application for full circle change ringing? Presumably it makes sense to have one organised entry than multiple similar but different entries for bellringing?

So what sort of team do ringers think they are signing up to? What pitch were they given when they were recruited? Were the band’s objectives made clear? Was the goal of method ringing stated? Were performance skills emphasised? Was there talk of shared commitment as well as social bonding?

I think this is very true. It also shows up when people move where they live and find themselves with a new home tower and might find the culture or expectations are very different. Some towers are always striving to develop and others are steadily providing a service and many are somewhere in between but acknowledging that is useful.
Often when you are inside a culture you don’t recognise it so a new perspective helps to ask questions and open up discussion.
Definitely as part of a recruitment it makes sense to explain your expectations or your usual practice as a band.

I don’t know of any Association/ Guild /Society which is using electronic voting.
I think there is a general feeling that people should sit through the meeting (online or face to face) to hear the context etc before voting but that’s largely just because it’s always been done that way.

For those using membership systems like MemberMojo it would be easy to either ask a question within a renewal or offer a vote as a checkout item in the shop (with no price) to collect votes from members only and I guess making sure only members can vote whilst anonymising the results is the challenge but when you vote at the meeting people see who raises their hand so an admin seeing who voted each option wouldn’t be any different.

The next article has not been published yet…. I can post here once it is.

Yes! That’s the article I remember. Thank you.

Maybe there are some useful ideas here: https://www.festivalchurches.org.uk/case-studies/
But I can’t find the article I was thinking of (sorry).

I don’t know whether anyone can really provide evidence that changes they have made enable them to be financially viable for the future but I do remember an article about a church I think in Cornwall which had significantly increased ‘visitors’ and donations by bringing in community activities ranging from ringing sessions to playgroups. I think it was part of the Save the Parish information but it might have been a Ringing World article.

There’s a discussion thread called The Road to Wigan’s Tears which goes into this topic a little bit and Simon Linford has provided some good information on categories of churches and what level of attendance / funding a church needs to achieve to survive.

I guess the St Clements Cambridge model uses ringing as a way to keep a church building open every day but this works for Cambridge as a city with lots of visitors and wouldn’t work in a rural village so it will depend on the exact location.
I remember being surprised in the article about the church in (I think) Cornwall that very few regular visitors were needed to justify keeping the church open and be considered a success.

My home tower church is considered a success because the church is hired out for recordings and filming and this brings in income despite a relatively small congregation but this works because it’s in London and with good acoustics so wouldn’t work everywhere.

I think I would start by looking at the equivalent community hall facilities in the local area and what happens there, if there is already a scout hut or Methodist hall or similar being used for yoga classes, music for toddlers, etc then the church has less chance of finding other users but if there’s a need for spaces which is not fulfilled then churches work well as food banks, libraries, cafes, music venues…

We had an approach from an American university who had a London summer placement to explore music and heritage. They paid, based on wedding fee rates for six and something generous for the tower and the cost of the ART Discover books, for a one hour experience.
That was fairly targeted because they were specifically in London to link music to heritage and that lends itself to an introduction to bellringing talk.

If you can only provide two ringers then you are more limited but you could still get them chiming in rounds with the bells down, possibly use handbells for some called changes and depending on your tower kit show a video of full circle change ringing.
Lots of people find the simple experience of climbing a spiral staircase to a room the public don’t normally see exciting. If you can add in some local fun facts or a view from the tower they will enjoy it.

On the other hand… I went on a mystery picnic which was a birthday gift and it was well put together to take you to independent shops and collect picnic ingredients, visit a herb bed at the park and see some sights. So I can see how something similar with a bellringing experience could work. People who choose this sort of event are likely to be curious and open minded so it could be a combination of PR and recruitment.

The high level of experienced ringers needed to support fast tracked progress is definitely the issue, the place where bellringing struggles compared to many other activities where one teacher can help small groups to improve.
The use of simulators for extending the ringing repertoire is not perfect, nothing is quite the same as ringing with ‘real’ ringers who a) smile at you but b) go wrong sometimes, but improving how we use simulator sessions feels like a key to supporting people to extend their capabilities in between high effort sessions for which people may have to travel quite far, etc.
If we tried cast of 1000 with a full day of ringing every second month and ‘homework’ to be done with simulator / Abel / pen and paper in between it could be more productive than relying on regular practice sessions.

The part about accepting people who won’t go further and how to manage that is definitely a tough one in local district / branch arrangements as some people will continue to come and ask to ring the same method month after month without ever seeming to improve and it’s not really possible to ask them not to come, you can only really (in my experience) encourage them to do some homework and set themselves some goals. But we notice some of the ringers with better potential get frustrated with the ‘wasted’ time or poor quality ringing and are then less likely to come to the practice themselves which becomes a vicious circle if you then miss the ringers who could be supporting more challenging ringing.

John Harrrison’s article in the RW this week talks about a decline in membership two to three years after each special push for new ringers. One of the reasons for this seems likely to be that some of those ringers find they can’t progress any further at their tower and don’t feel supported by the Branch or District to keep them progressing and another proposed reason, which could also be true for some, is that bands become overwhelmed by learners who all need to practice endless plain hunt (for example) and some of the more experienced ringers lose interest or the tower stops recruiting while getting this batch of learners to a standard.
Every time we aim to increase the ringing population quickly we hit this kind of barrier so asking the experienced ringers to help becomes increasingly tiresome (for many).
This does suggest that methods which allow for more solo learning and practice, mixed with very targeted opportunities with the investment of support from experienced ringers, will become more and more important as the available bank of experienced ringers decreases (based on the age profile of ringers).

Paying for the kind of support offered in the ARA would make it a very expensive ringing course so we probably do need to work on the basis of making helping attractive (by limiting how often we ask, ensuring the students are well prepared to make the most of it, offering interesting towers, enjoyable socialising around the ringing, etc). I guess ARA students could be asked to offer their time for a next level down RA the following summer, something targeting surprise minor / Stedman triples, for young ringers who may have had less opportunity to be seen and less opportunity to get into surprise ringing which would ease the burden on the grown ups and set the culture for paying it forward.

Angela (as a RFTK returner) has used a variety of ways to ask people to get in touch if they are willing to join the Marketing workgroup and what she gets is lots of views on what the workgroup has done badly in the past or what needs to be done beyond the remit of the Marketing workgroup and no actual volunteers to get involved.
It’s no wonder that available enthusiasm walks away and focuses on more local activities where it is easier to make an impact as a willing individual.
The major challenges don’t change, small scale solutions are being tried in a variety of local ways, failure to drive bigger / faster change is the responsibility of everyone who has awareness of the issues and the chance to be involved. The Central Council is an amalgamation of ringers who aim to work together to help improve ringing but we all have the chance to be part of it and it’s easy to criticise without investing time in trying to help.
I understand the frustration that change can be very slow in a volunteer led set up which relies on people (associations and towers) choosing to adopt ideas and strategies (because they can’t be told what to do) but I don’t think the Exec or the Council can be held responsible for the current situation without acknowledging that they are the product of the ringers overall.

I think for each local Association to set themselves up to be an employer would be relatively high investment / effort when they are likely, at least at the start, to be employing one or two people only. If the church is already an employer then it’s easier for them to add one person to the payroll. If the CCCBR becomes an employer then it too could scale up. But I agree that the current CCCBR is not set up to offer the service of being the employer for local ringing centres.
The administration and responsibility of becoming an employer is a barrier to changing the model for bellringing because it is generally so locally driven.

The piano teacher quoted above raises a slightly different context of ‘gig economy’ employment or self employed ringing teachers who could earn money direct from students but I wonder whether this could really be practical with insurance, using the church as a venue and using the church ‘equipment’ with H&S risks, safeguarding risks, etc. Even piano teachers presumably have to be careful about inviting students into their home for lessons, perhaps as a group activity bellringing is safer in some areas and riskier in others.

I'm confident that if we took a realistic and sensible approach people wouldn't mind paying a nominal amount to be taught to ring but I don't know how we change the mindset of those in charge.

Isn’t part of the problem that there is no ‘those in charge’. Each tower can do what it wants (provided the church incumbent doesn’t object). Associations or Guilds have no ‘rules’ on this kind of topic but also no aligned guidelines on what they expect towers in their area to do (so no consistency) and the Central Council is equally ambivalent on the subject.
This is why there are no standard expectations for how to learn to ring (including cost) and a variety of schemes which help someone teach someone with an order of techniques to work through.
I agree that ART is becoming the way to learn to teach and has very supportive schemes for new teachers, teaching new learners.
No one is saying that it should be free (just habits) and some people are starting to charge, with a variety of models.
If we all charged for teaching the bell funds would have way too much money in them (Roger Booth recently made the point in the Ringing World that donations always being targeted at restoration / maintenance projects is not helping currently) so if the teachers don’t want the money where does it go?

If paying is supposed to lead to more teaching being available then we would need to recruit people who will teach (and administrate / organise for teaching).
This is the the model at St Clements Cambridge (for example) and it relies on the church involved to be willing to manage the payroll / employer responsibilities. This could be possible in more places but it’s a fairly big ask of the church.
We probably need to give St Clements three years before we could consider approaching each diocese to have one similar set up OR we need ART or the CCCBR to be willing to be the employer and that would be a significant step for either organisation to take.

Would you advocate a national model with one employer for ringing centres / ringing teachers across the country or would you see it working better if a local employer (like the local church) was the employer but with some standard job descriptions, etc which could be prepared as a CCCBR guideline?

I like this overall message, and the examples of how to give yourself time to think and how to create positive answers.
In recent years we have caused our own general problem with Ringing Remembers and Ring for the King both starting with the premise that we need more bellringers to be able to ring all the bells (rather than ‘we have an exciting opportunity for more people to join us’).
The natural and authentic stories which come from ringers themselves, like the recent Guardian article on a new hobby after 60, tend to have a much more positive outlook and with the rise in social media it is easier for individuals to present what ringing means for them in a quick and visual way which, hopefully, shows the variety of ringers and reasons to ring so raises awareness for more of the public.

What do others think, do we need an up to date guide on Public Relations?
Do we need a printed version, or an online reference point on the CCCBR website?

I think an up to date guide would be useful.
I even think it could be a curated collection of best practice examples from the many tower activities which have made use of social media, local print media and so on for recruitment and general awareness of bellringing over the last three years.

I have a similar concern about the implied contract and the muddle of the transition from learner to helper, which can be mixed even inside one practice.
But I also worry that society is changing in a way which means that fewer people are willing (or able) to fulfil the implied contract and people increasingly choose to pay so that they don’t need to invest time.
There was an exchange on this topic a while back (I think in these forums but I can’t be sure).
Research on volunteering says that people are less likely to volunteer now than they were ten or more years ago and I think this is influencing bell ringing (even if the extent to which you consider yourself a volunteer if you attend a practice where most of your time is being one of the ‘strong’ ringers is not clearly defined.
On the other hand when I look back at annual reports from 30 plus years ago I see the same ‘problem’ that people had more than one role and kept those roles for years at a time, suggesting that people weren’t easily volunteering to take on organisational roles then either.
One of our recruitment challenges is attracting people who can offer sufficient commitment to be a supportive part of a bellringing band but the level of commitment can vary over time in someone’s ringing career.
I suspect we will increasingly offer training at a cost and use a large proportion of the money to pay for the organisation of ringing centres and training courses (rather than primarily for paying the actual teachers or helpers) and I can see how this increases the opportunities for early learning and progression which should bring benefit to all in the long run.

For the first it sounds like the ringer is struggling to understand how to control ringing to the balance each time, and therefore how to be able to choose to wait before the next stroke.
Possibly some time alone to try to ring slower and slower and slower (but with control) might be useful for really feeling where the balance is.
It might also help to go through the mechanics again, a refresher on what the bell is doing and therefore how you can influence it can be useful once someone is able to ring but needs to fine tune.

For the second the most obvious exercise seems to be the hands down and look the tail end is right here for your hand to fall on, wrists together actions because then there is no reason to worry and it should become clear that it is actually easier and takes less time, because your hand arrives at the tail end at the bottom of the hand stroke (no ‘catching’ required).
It might help to demonstrate this yourself (and I’ll bet ART has a video for it) and to get him to try it while you hold the tail end or hover near the tail end so that there’s no pressure. It’s also one which can be practiced with a down bell, simply practicing the movement with no swing in the bell, to make it feel normal to bring the hands all the way down.

Hopefully some of this helps but bellringing.org will have more exercises and videos which might also help.