Ringing Forums

It is true that covering the reasonable expenses of the Council Reps is the single largest budget item in the Scottish Association. And for international organisations, the ability of a rep to be able to afford to travel can't help but be a consideration.

Truly understanding the full role of a Council Rep is still a loose end from when we reorganised and modernised how the Council operated. Previously, Reps, as well as representing their associations, were expected and encouraged to join committees and participate in the many activities that the Council does to serve ringing. In fact, if you weren't a Rep, you *couldn't* participate in that way.

The reforms removed that barrier, which was incredibly liberating, especially for some teams where they interesting in a particular thing and not actually interested in the rest of the Council activities. The original plan was to dramatically reduce the number of Reps, leaving them with the governance role wihtout the expectation to further volunteer.

The Association chooses their representatives, and then decides what they want from them, in exchange for some payment of reasonable expenses.

Personally, I would be delighted if ASsociations chose Representatives who were also willing to engage more meaningfully with the work that we do, join a working group or otherwise volunteer. The more help and experience we have here, the more we can accomplish.

Also quite a few associations have chosen their President or other officer as a Rep, and this is an extremely valuable relationship and perspective.

If we were going to be daring, could we propose some radical ideas:

1. For the role and scope of the meeting itself, does this need to be an in-person event? Would we be more inclusive if we held it online?

2. Should the in-person event be more of a volunteer/activity showcase?

3. Would we work better with a Council membership made up of association leaders?

I don't have answers by the way, just throwing some thoughts out there.

The school lesson plsns are well along in terms of the content. But the packaging up to offer to schools is still a piece that we need to do. I know that Andrea Haynes is looking to form a short task group to create the delivery model and rollout plan, so that it is there right under school's noses, and how to transition this into a sustainable project. We are especially looking for ringers in education to help with this, as well as people who have some background in this part of a project lifecycle. There will be an article in the RW about it soon.

Have we compared what is published in The Ringing World with what is published for a similar time period on BellBoard? It might be worth knowing if a lot of peal bands simply choose not to have their performances in the printed version. I know a few people who think that it is unnecessary for peals to take up valuable print space.

If we follow the evidence though, I think there is plenty that has come out of Andrew Craddock's peals analyses over the years, which has shown a long term trend for fewer and fewer people ringing in more and more peals. The evidence says it is a bit of a closed shop, with some healthy exceptions (as Jack has pointed out) Hence the push in 2015 to for people to ring their first peal.

As someone who identifies as a peal ringer, but doesn't ring all that many these days, having a few peal attempts under your belt does build the right stamina and confidence, and is that opportunity to learn rhythm and striking, and more importantly, the consistency of keeping that rhythm and striking throughout.

I'll be a bit controversial though and posit that some peals bands can be a bit lazy on that front. I've been in a few attempts where there was about an hour of really decent ringing, due to time spent getting settled into the rhythm, dealing the odd-struckness of other bells and ringers, that 'tired' period just after halfway and so on. Because there is time to deal with all of that.

On the other hand, I have experience of dedicated quarter peal ringers who can go straight to excellent within a few changes and keep that going for the length of the quarter peal, because that is all the time there is. So the question is, do we need to spend 3 hours to get an hour of decent ringing, or can we focus on the one hour all at once. Which is better? Or is that the wrong question?

Spot on Lucy. But the work with YellowYoYo goes beyond making us a logo we can just slap onto anything we want. What we are closing off now is updated recruitment/open day posters/pull down banners with the new branding and new messaging to create a consistent message right across all ringing. These will be able to be customised to link to a particular URL without having to do all the design work yourself.

This will be at the heart of a central repository that we can keep building, so if you have specific needs/sizes, it is worth speaking to us about it.

We'll be looking at teasing out, documenting and prioritising our initial requirements fairly soon. Will be good to have feedback after that?

I'm always in favour of a pilot :) I was just pointing out that 'free' isn't really free. People's time has value even if it is volunteered.

Interesting.

Whatever we self-host we have to support, which means ensuring regular security updates (which would be essential because of the personal data stored. The sustainability of that is also something we need to take into account.

Hi Lucy, understood, that makes sense. The Council exec is taking a look at this in terms of whether it is a solution that could reduce effort/cost for associations. It probably makes sense to feed into this process, and also to keep discussions open on this forum.

This is very timely, because we are starting to look at MemberMojo to see what capacity there might be for economies of scale, and also to Alison's point of reducing duplicated effort (which is really key). As Roger points out, a trial is an obvious way to test this out, and doesn't require everyone to make a wholesale change all at once. If it can be made to work, then one customer with a big subscription has more ability to influence rates and also to be heard when discussing changes or customisations.

Lucy, there has been a lot of chat about this particlar software on these Forums. Is it worth organising a bit of a workshop with some interested people?

I have been thinking for a while that something more like 3 ringers per bell is what you need to have a long term viable and self-sustaining band. One, it takes the pressure off ringers to absolutely be there every Sunday or no ringing will occur. With that pressure off, it is easier to welcome ringers who have young children/work shifts/ etc, rather than having them self-select to quit.
Also it gives you some contingency for when or if you lose a lot in one period of time.

I think it could make for a challenging practice night, in the category of good problems to have

On the back of last night's successful and interesting consultation, Cathy Booth has shared this YouTube video that supported Spain's application for 'manual bellringing'.
https://youtu.be/_ZcYr4UiG34?si=Gu3PcujKloABtHcg

It was part of last night's discussion what we might or might not include in a similar application - but the Spanish approach appears to have been 'all possible variations and supporting crafts'.

It's a good video

Hello,

Further to this discussion, the Council exec have created a couple of open public consultation sessions. This is early days on this topic but we would like to get a good range of ideas and thoughts to help shape how we present ourselves for this. You may join either call via the eventbrite registration links below:

Sunday 28th January 8pm

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/803237483937?aff=oddtdtcreator

Sunday 11th February 3pm:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/803311655787?aff=oddtdtcreator

Look forward to seeing you there!

Thanks John, that is a useful piece of information. Worth keeping on top of though.

We do need to look into this before leaping into anything (lthough clearly there is a long process just starting on the whole scheme).

The immeidate benefits are likely intangible, but a concrete and public recognition of the cultural value of bellringing could be important. It might help when talking to other stakeholders - it might mean that the UK government has to commit to preservative or protective actions (which may not be financially defined but might exist).

Interested in hearing what people think.......

And a good guess John. Our idea is to bring these sources together, but also as John Harrison points out, build on those connections to create a good end-to-end journey for a new ringer.

We have learned some lessons: so for Ringing Remembers, there was an effective but quite manual process, which took a lot of effort from the volunteers who ran that. For Ring for the King, the process was a little more automated but still required a considerable number of person-hours to get recruits to a reasonable destination. And we weren't successful at getting all the queries to a reasonable destination. Some just disappeared into a black hole of non-communication, due to not knowing where to send them. In other ways, the number of recruits simply overwhelmed the available resource to manage it.

So, without jumping straight to solutions, we can define some desirable outcomes:
- better information online for new ringers
- make that information easier to find
- ensure that potential ringers (or simply curious public) has a positive experience of bellringing (regardless of whether they continue to become ringers)

Some tactical solutions are reasonably easy to define - a single entry point into a good recruitment website/channel well supported with marketing is a practical solution that solves part of the problem.

How do we determine where they go after that? That is the trickier part, and we don't have easy answers to that. That is why this is a marathon rather than a sprint.

We aren't going to solve it all straight away either. That is no reason to try and make it better, and there are a lot of creative problem solvers in bellringing.

In response to part of your original question, we have been grappling with this at Glasgow for quite a while, due to a large number of learners. They are all very welcome and have enhanced the band, but we have been aware that progress (which isn't just about method ringing) for more intermediate and advanced ringers was stalling. For example, we were finding it hard to bring ringers on to 10-bell ringing of any sort.

What we are experimenting with now is to designate one practice a month for a 10-bell practice (and in the same week have a separate 6-bell practice. I wonder if it would be worth thinking about dividing your practice just a little bit to help you and the other ringers in the same situation. The more confident you are, the better framework you can create for your learners as well.