Ringing Forums

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.

I think (hope) that this is part of what YellowYoyo’s Ringing 2030 project will bring. The plan is for a clear Bellringing logo and branding which can be used for recruitment and other publicity to non ringers, to encourage more people to become ringers or at least to feel positive and a little more knowledgeable about bell ringing. So easy to use available resources should be on their way very soon.

You are right that lots of people create stuff they are willing to share and the only hard bit is finding a place to put them where people can easily find them and download them, with the CCCBR website the natural place for it.

No. but typically they probably don’t pay the coach who turns up every Saturday to get new young cricketers trained up. And they are probably also struggling to find volunteers to drive the minibus to away matches, maintain the website with the information about upcoming matches, etc.
It’s not only bellringing which is finding it harder to generate volunteers to take responsibility.

I think in many areas this already happens.
I ring in towers from four different territorial associations reasonably regularly and many other ringers cross over at least two associations regularly with no complaints about membership (until you ring an peal there) and no less right to be there.
Equally we have some towers in our annual report and website which sit on boundaries and are also listed in bordering annual reports and websites, usually as an affiliate in one and full tower in the other. But again, it makes no difference to how they are treated.
On top of that there are then informal or semi formal ringing groups based on geography which crosses borders and brings local ringers together.
I am surprised that in some parts of the country people are not invited to cross boundaries or it’s not easy for towers and ringers to organise and take part in local activities when this crosses diocesan boundaries.

I think one of the possible outcomes is that ringing starts to pay people for the organising and administrative roles, becoming more like a gym. We see a little of this with ART and the Cambridge ringing centre but are 99% volunteers right now.

Many people enjoy ringing without imagining that they would need to take on additional responsibility for five years out of twenty (or something similar) for tower, branch and guild responsibilities to be shared evenly. They rely on other people to take responsibility consistently, often in more than one role.
Partly this is a sign that people lead busy lives with multiple responsibilities. Many new ringers are surprised that it costs almost nothing but, probably, would rather pay more than have to find time to be an organiser, steeple keeper, society treasurer, etc.

I think this would be a shame as it could start to exclude some people and it changes the dynamic of a relatively grass roots, localised set up which helps to build community but getting the message out that all ringers need to volunteer to take extra responsibility for part of their ringing career is not so easy when learners are just starting out.

as I said at the start of this… I would be willing to talk to two or three others and then talk to MemberMojo as a group but…. as stated yesterday not if this becomes a huge topic of whether one national membership is the answer for all associations as I think that’s a much bigger topic and will take far longer to reach any kind of definition to then discuss with MemberMojo. So it depends what you are aiming for.

I’ve never considered myself Victorian but I have no intention of getting involved in a push to a single national (global) organisation! I offered assistance with a suggested idea, I am not extending that to a much bigger idea so I’ll leave others to decide if they want to try it.

That’s a suggestion for a different model from the original question posed (I think) and would therefore require a different kind of project. I was aiming to answer the question posed as a way to potentially save money and scale efficient methods of collecting subs that could be offered quickly.

I think that there are enough ringing associations using member mojo now to pull together a conversation with them about improvements or adjustments which would suit the ringing set up. For example I’d like them to make it easy for us to mark the tower contact and then let the tower contact see who has renewed in their home tower. Potentially a group discount for ringing associations could be negotiated, making use of the overall volume but keeping individual association subscription rates, databases and ‘rules’ on how MemberMojo is used. I’d be happy to work with one or two others to start a conversation and see whether MemberMojo see any benefits for them in this.

It could also be that ringing all eight would then be limited to called changes or plain hunt, to keep to quality striking for neighbours, and that perhaps this is part of the decision to ring six where the method repertoire might be wider for most people at the practice. So it is definitely worth asking for a little bit more information, whilst making it clear that you would like the opportunity to ring all eight.
Some towers near me have one practice a month which aims to ring all bells and they ask extra visitors or irregular visitors to make extra effort to come that week of the month to make it possible to ring all bells at least once a month.

Three ringers I regularly ring with have all had significant operations in the last four years and simply not mentioned bellringing as an activity, knowing that a medic with little knowledge will suggest they stop and trusting that they can feel for themself what feels manageable as they recover. I think experienced ringers can make that judgement and sometimes it’s the stairs that are the problem rather than the ringing. A little bit like with a learner who visits the tower for the first time a simple safety net of someone close by willing to take over the rope if needed let’s someone try ringing a bell they are used to for the first time after an operation and see how it feels.
And… not everyone is an older ringer when this happens (but I appreciate it is more and more likely as we get older that we will have operations or long term conditions to manage and need to adjust to new physical capacity.
Every time I give blood I’m told not to do any physical activity that day and then I cycle to bellringing and ring up the tenor without any issues, but I would know if I felt a little faint or sick and then be more careful what I tried.
Then there are ringers who find ringing a really useful exercise for stretching back muscles, keeping flexible and gentle activity which keeps us fit. The medics also don’t know enough to suggest bellringing when they suggest yoga classes or a walk in the park as good for mental and physical health!

and I fully agree with this! One of things I liked about learning to ring as a young teenager was being treated as an equal with adults rather than the usual clear teacher, student relationship and I still think that having regular contact with a wide range of age groups, through bellringing is enjoyable and good for everyone.

Most Associations have a librarian or similar role so if you check the Association website you should be able to find contact details. Many Associations have scanned their old reports so they can make them searchable and available for enquiries.