Ringing Forums

I think emphasising the chance to keep learning, to work as a team, the social side and the chance to meet new people on outings, when you visit a new city and to have a wider variety of people you see regularly because bellringing often introduces you to people you wouldn’t have met through studies or work. So it’s a hobby a bit like joining an orchestra or amateur dramatics or a rambling group. If you have a variety of people being interviewed this is likely to come out naturally but I think some people think bellringing will be very serious, religious and once you have learnt then you just do it (because they don’t know we have thousands of different methods to try!).

I think Peter has provided very valid feedback here. The document does a job to enable safe running of a tower but the leadership, human interaction and social side are missing in the style of the document. Unfortunately this means that people most likely to need it, because they’ve not been part of a well led band where they have learnt the skills to run the tower over time, get a rather daunting and formal impression of what is needed. In many cases the soft skills are harder to teach but they are invaluable to good leadership which builds a strong and happy band who enjoy their ringing practice.

I think you are right, you want them to understand a bit about Bellringing, to consider whether they might like to learn and to be ready to talk about what they saw, heard and learnt to interested friends and family. Maybe you can ask them to fill in some feedback afterwards, to say what was interesting for them, what was confusing for them, what most surprised them. This might help future similar open day tours and could help with recruitment / pr ideas for what the public need to know to understand that it is real people, etc.

The coronation will be an interesting opportunity to see how many peals might be rung in a year, given a very good reason to ring. Maybe this will encourage people to ring their first peal, or their first peal for years.
Potentially a decline in peal ringing fits with many things in life which are becoming shorter, faster experiences as everyone is busy and / or has shorter attention spans.
Perhaps we need a focus, alongside the ring for the king campaign to ring every bell, on encouraging people to ring a peal and sharing how this can be prepared for and most manageable - practice quarters beforehand, extents or lengths of different methods to keep it interesting, a chance to request a conductor for a band which may not have anyone experienced to conduct a peal for them?

In the Middlesex Association after paying subs for 40 years you become a life member and don’t pay subs any more.
You can also purchase life membership, it currently costs equivalent to 20 years of today’s subs price. But generally it is not encouraged because it requires a certain amount of accounting headache and it’s much easier to have annual subs, reflecting more closely the involved and active ringers.

We’ve not considered taking away the 40 year benefit for life membership but I guess in theory you could introduce it gradually by letting people know that if they’ve paid less than 20 years so far then they will need 50 years instead of 40 to get life membership and if they’ve paid less than 10 years then they should no longer expect life membership.
I don’t see any reason to take away the long service benefit but it could be phased out if an Association wanted to.

I like the idea of Bell Sunday and I hope we can use it to raise awareness in church congregations that people ring bells, one person per bell (most of the time) and that nearly anyone can learn!

In lots of ways this still gives us around 80% of the population who would be open to bellringing as a hobby, because those with no religion are often comfortable to ring (like me). But it does reflect the decreasing church attendance and the risk from there that churches close and become apartments or similar. Although it’s also possible that the core of those identifying as Christian now are the church goers, where many people ticked Christian because they had no active religion but ‘ethnically’ associated with Christianity. So more research to do to understand our potential audience for recruitment!

Yes, in principle I agree but in practice I see it to a certain extent within a tower band and from selected people within a district or association but there are many, many ringers who only ring for the ringing which suits them (perhaps at different stages in their ringing career they have more and less time available) and reaching the point where we need 25% more bellringers (as a target) is a very big ask for the 25% (ish, pure guesstimate) who will put in the extra work to try and achieve this.

The challenge in recruiting and teaching new ringers, including in group courses at later stages of learning, is that we ‘need’ one new ringer for every four current active ringers (if the Ring for the King stats are accurate) but less than one in four active ringers can teach handling or will give up additional time for teaching and helping in a structured session designed for the learner.
So those that do have to invest a significant amount of time in teaching and helping learners. This can easily lead to frustration or burnout for the originally willing volunteer. Trying to offer the best possible experience to every recruit and enjoy your own ringing opportunities is time consuming or means something loses out.
I do think it helps new learners to be part of the community of the ringing practice and that most who attend a training course (whether half a day locally or a longer course) enjoy the experience and feel that they have benefited but I also think this is part of how we teach because volunteers don’t have time to offer one to one (let alone a band built to support a learner for constant plain hunt or whatever) for every learner for all of their rope time.
I would like to see more ringers recognise that they can give back for the support they have received (often still receive) by helping others in a wide range of ways from a relatively early stage in their own learning. If we could make it obvious for everyone that bellringing requires teamwork all the way through we could spread the work wider and we might then find it easier to offer better quality teaching to more of our new recruits and re-build, still as a volunteer led organisation.

I think the original article highlighted the different approaches to the future of ringing.
On the one hand there is an aim to have active towers where ringers can enjoy progressing to exciting methods or excellent called changes as a purpose in itself, an enjoyable hobby using high quality skill. On the other hand there is an aim to ensure church bells can be rung regularly for services to a good standard.
For lots of ringers these two cross over and they ring for services, sometimes with limited numbers and limited chance to use their skill but on other days or at other towers they get the challenge of stretching their skills with a band of ringers who want to learn new methods and / or focus on perfect striking for the best music.
Part of what holds us back or part of what needs to be debated in the Ringing 2030 plan is how we balance the two aims as they do make a huge difference to how you recruit, teach and approach ringing.

Middlesex Association
£10 adult membership
1. Districts spend money from the general fund when needed (but very little is spent)
2. 60% is spent within the general fund:
20% covers insurance
20% other general costs like the annual report
In recent years around 20% has been spent on training installations and activities
3. Roughly 40% goes to the BRF
4. Any tower wanting a BRF contribution makes a grant request for an amount so the % of the total restoration cost is not used as a measure and small jobs may get a higher % from the BRF than big jobs
5. We keep enough in the general account for one year of no subscriptions but everything else is channeled to the the BRF and / or training related activities and installations

Yes, I understand the point but I still think it is hard for someone of a different religion to feel comfortable with the extent to which ringing relates to the Christian church. Relatively easy for an atheist or agnostic, harder for someone who actively believes in a different religion. And most Associations and Guilds have wording about Christianity in their ‘purpose’ (as does the CCCBR) so diversity will always be limited to some extent (although there are plenty of other aspects of diversity in age, ethnicity and ability/ disability, neurodiversity etc where bellringing can do well.

I think this is difficult because most towers are based in C of E churches and it is hard to separate the ringing from the institution (and some ringers would say you shouldn’t). Many of the ethnic minorities in the UK are Christians, but they are less likely to be C of E so they may not be able to ring for service at their local tower and join their church service (although some can and do). It’s even harder for someone with an alternative religion to ring for a service which calls people to prayer for a religion they don’t agree with (as an atheist I sometimes struggle with this!). I’d say it easier to start with the wider Christian community and find the diversity here first.
Many new ringers still say they did not know how to get into ringing, that they thought it was an invited skill rather than open to new interested people so the first task is to make it more widely known that ringers are wanted and to make ringing accessible to come and see and learn a bit about it.

We don’t have any kind of PR or communications officer.
I look after Twitter, there is a Facebook page which is rarely updated (and a Facebook group which is occasionally used) but no coordinated activity to promote the Association to people outside the world of ringing.
The website is looked after by a group of webmasters on different topics and seems quite successful at directing people to tower contacts but there is an intention to update the website next year.
If there is to be coordinated activity to meet a significant recruitment objective we would need to find volunteers to support PR, including social media, and consider teaching more ringers how to teach handling (if they are willing to learn and put in the time to teach handling).

So my take is that it doesn't matter what sort of organisation a Guild or Branch is as far as opportunities for ringing are concerned, 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.

I agree with this, the issue is how to find / generate that willing person in each tower who will support and encourage. This person needs time, commitment and interpersonal skills as well as an interest in seeing people progress and not every tower has someone like this.
Developing more ringers with these skills and this willingness should be a focus as it makes the biggest difference to the experience of the ringers in the band but it is not easy and we might have to accept focusing on a few towers with strength to develop rather than trying to support all towers (and maybe come back to the left behind towers when the few are building bands of excess ringers AND willing tower captains / teachers / development supporters.

We did two simple surveys in the Middlesex Association, one when first starting ringing again from lockdown and the second around six months later, to see how many more towers had got back to regular ringing.
We asked tower contacts and the district secretaries followed up with contacts who did not reply initially. It gave us a good understanding of how often towers were ringing, what proportion of the band were back to regular ringing and whether the tower was willing / able to actively recruit and teach when that was possible again.
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.
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).

I agree with this:
Jason Carter - But sharing what media focus is coming up from the centre, so that those ringers that want to, can piggy back off it, is really important, in my humble opinion.

I was surprised that we had the Times article and various other pieces about Ring for the King but no distributed ‘press pack’ for all Associations / towers to make use.
Maybe something has been sent to Association PR contacts but nothing has filtered down (in my area) or maybe the National PR started before the press pack is ready but it is a shame not to be able to quickly capitalise on it in an easy and efficient way.

The Women in Ringing workgroup researched the number of people who register with ART to learn to ring, the number who ring a quarter peal, the number who ring a peal and even the number who conduct peals. Their focus was on the gap between male and female participation at these various milestones but the data must have started with total numbers. So you could explore the research here or ask from this website: https://www.womeninringing.info/
I think you would have to ask Bryn for the original data set as the articles give you the total number of unique ringers for anything quarter peal length and longer but not then the breakdown of quarters and peals (but they must have had those numbers to be able to show the male female split in peals vs. quarters.

Most towers in London offer £20 a rope in order to get a band to ring out for a wedding. In the City of London it is often £30, more if it is ringing in and out.
This generally means that people choose to ring for the weddings available and don’t feel put out about giving their time (and more than cover their costs for travel).

I don’t see people thinking teaching bell handling is prestigious but I do think people need a certain level of experience and confidence in their own bell handling before starting to teach others. I have seen some ringers start teaching within two years of learning and this can work very well as they remember what was difficult and explain next steps in simple terms.
I think many less experienced ringers are nervous about volunteering to teach bell handling and need to know that they can learn to teach in a supported way, with ART as the obvious easy way to support people in learning to teach bell handling.
But I also see that only a small minority of ringers are willing to invest time to support others, support organisation and take responsibility to make more ringing possible and for a fully voluntary organisation that’s an issue. I think our internal marketing campaign is along the lines of give something back, how can you help ringing to succeed in the future so that you can continue to enjoy it? Learning to teach handling and committing to helping one Saturday morning a month (or similar) with training sessions or special practices would be really helpful but often the few who have always done it continue and not many new / extra people volunteer to get involved.