Ringing Forums

Coincidentally, i am just in the process of updating all the tower contacts for the Leicester Guild. As we haven't had a Guild report since before covid, a lot of our information is out of date, and its a huge task to update it. I've had to learn how to mail merge from spreadsheets(!), although the alternative would be to email all of the towers individually. Thankfully District secretaries have been a huge help in asking their tower contacts to fill in the online form for me, but as we have some districts without secretaries I'm now having to mop up the rest myself. Hopefully once I have email addresses for the majority of towers I shall be able to automate the system so I can send out an email each year for people to make sure the data is up to date. I am beginning to think that for some towers we will just have to put "information not held by the guild" for the contact details.
As the webmaster I often get messaged by people who sent an email via our website but haven't had a reply - most of the time the email got through ok, but the recipient hasn't replied. It isn't always the technology that is broken.

There has been talk in the Leicester Diocese about moving to a Minster church system of organisation for several years. A quick search of the Diocesan webpage came up with this: https://www.leicester.anglican.org/about-us/sbgt/
Interestingly, an article from someone within one of the churches that has already started the process highlighted that it is not being imposed from above, but worked by the people on the ground, and that churches are allowed to opt out - though all future clergy appointments in the diocese will only be to Minster communities. https://www.leicester.anglican.org/reflection-from-nanpantan-on-beginning-the-minster-community-formation-process.php

You know, I think I prefer them before they were tuned!

In my case I didn't have to pay anything until I finished my training. But the club I joined was a small local affair who weren't particularly organised. I only got my certificate of training when I wanted to visit another club and needed proof from my own club that I had passed the training. Larger or more organised clubs may very well take the payment up front.
Being a very honest person who wouldn't dream of skipping out without paying, I never considered that it might be more normal for the payment to be taken upfront!

A few years ago I took up archery for a couple of years. It has some similarities to bellringing - most new recruits don't have the equipment needed (club provides it for beginners), and also people need training before they can start to take part. The way it worked then, and presumably still does, is that you would have an initial training period. No money would change hands until the end of your training. If you decided not to continue, you would pay your club the cost of your training - I think it was in the region of £30. If you want to continue you need to pay to become a member of the national organisation, and the club receives some payment to cover your training cost from your subscription, which was about £50-£60 (I can't remember the exact figures now). You could not join your local club without being a member of the national organisation, partly as membership included being covered by insurance, so local clubs didn't need to arrange their own.

I probably haven't scratched the surface yet in what Google Forms can do! As far as I know there isn't a limit to the number of answer options for each question you ask. You also have the option to do multiple choice (user can only choose one option - good for consenting for their information to be used); check box answers, where the user can choose multiple answers; drop down boxes; short or long answers - for user inputted text; you can have a grid of tick boxes, or a linear scale. You can keep all the questions on one page, or multiple pages, and I think (not 100% sure) you can have a countdown of how far through the form you are (esp. useful if you use multiple pages.)
As has been mentioned, the trick is asking the right questions. Balancing getting enough information with making it not too long a questionnaire that people get bored part way through. (Just a thought that has occurred to me - is it worth offering an incentive to fill it in such as entry into a raffle for a prize? People do like to feel that they might get something back for the time they have spent filling it in.)

I haven't been keeping up with the nitty gritty of this thread, so my apologies if I am reiterating something that has already been said.
I have recently discovered through my own work with my local guild that if you use Google Forms as a way of eliciting information, the responses received can be automatically added to a google sheets spreadsheet - and once it is set up it is live and any future responses get automatically added also.
It is an easy matter to send a link to the Form to mass recipients on an emailing list - many Guilds/Associations have them. I do appreciate tha this will not necessarily reach the traditionally unreachable, but maybe it would be a start.

Thanks Chris, this has been very helpful. I was working on the assumption that bellhangers, as they are employed by a company, would have done risk assessments. Therefore, if they weren't wearing hats, then their risk assessment would have said they weren't necessary.

We are going to suggest bump hats to our H&S rep. which seems to be an adequate response to the situation.

Now all we have to do is make sure that when we fall off the parapet when working on the roof we make sure to land on our head so the hard hat we are wearing at his insistence will protect us!

I would have said that there is a case of pairing the right teacher with the right learner in certain situations, but not necessarily linked to the ringing ability of the teacher/the stage of learning of the learner.

Some people are good at teaching as long as the learner is straighforward at learning. But if the learner has more complex needs - eg being not as quick as picking up a physical skill as average, having a disability, etc, this teacher may not be able to adjust their teaching style. Some teachers might be good at getting such learners through the handling stage, but then can't teach method ringing - even if they are trying to teach something they know how to do - I know I can't stand behind someone learning a method because I can't get my brain to engage with my mouth quickly enough to tell them what to do.

How many learners get put off because they go to their local tower to learn and end up with the wrong teacher for their particular needs?

And of course the same combination of permutations rung on handbells (usually with two bells per ringer) often takes a lot less time - see https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1458352 for an extreme example.

Would a marketplace section be useful - somewhere where non-professionals can list items for sale, such as when fundraising for bell projects?
I must admit a vested interest in this as I am about to advertise Christmas cards for sale. A forum such as this would make it easier for people to find details of items for sale, as I find with facebook if you miss a post in the first few days of it being posted, it tends to get lost in the ether.