Ringing Forums

I agree with John - definitely let people locally know that you are looking for peal ringing opportunities. Tell Andrew Kelso for instance and he might also put you in touch with others. Unfortunately there are not enough peal organisers who will go out of their way to try and include new people in their peals, and it needs you to be proactive.

That's a nice thought. Learn to ring and you get 30,000 new friends.

We had that on a quarter peal tour when we were youngsters. We were given £100 by a desperate producer not to ring a quarter and it paid for our food for the rest of the week!

We are straying away from the original question which was whether we should charge for filming requests, especially ones where the benefit to ringing is at best marginal. This has certainly been the case for some of the later RtfK enquiries which were from overseas news agencies. Usually we are delighted to have media attention, and we seem to have got away from the media seeing ringing as one of the 'fun' stories to something they take seriously, but some of the requests we have had have looked to be much more trouble than they're worth.

I was going to say exactly the same thing. The District/Branch is the effective unit of organisation really, and if that isn't working the onus falls on towers and individuals to get things organised themselves. Martyn highlights quite how difficult that is if there is a lack of critical mass or motivation at any organisation level that currently exists. @Martyn Bristow your branch or district is not unique, and actually there aren't many ringing associations who see their role as facilitating the development of their members by providing peal ringing opportunities. That is left to the 'market' and the 'market' comprises people who want to organise peals and need to find ringers for them. Once you're 'in' and known to be a peal ringer it tends to open you up to more opportunities.

Some associations do have annual peal days which encourage peals for people who are keen but don't know how to break in. The Lichfield & Walsall are a good example - I think they have a peal week to encourage members to ring peals and encourage the ringing of firsts above all else.

There are not many peal organisers who will actively look for people to who to provide opportunities. Most are operating with quite closed groups, where they know what they are getting. Or they might be motivated by providing opportunities to young ringers they wish to encourage. There are some though and it is a question of finding who they are in your area.

I'll have a chat with Colin Newman when I next see him as he has been leading the work with these groups - I'll get this to read this @Mr Colin G Newman. I struggle myself with knowing exactly how to describe Scouts and Guides now, given 'Girlguiding' is now the term used. All those of a certain age know what Scouts and Guides means, but I am not quite sure what is technically correct.

What ringing also does is enable some people to have social contact and be part of a team when they find that difficult to do. You can spend lots of time in the company of others without actually having to do any conversation at all, and for some people that is very good. We accept people who find social situations difficult. Not necessarily something for the marketing - just an observation.

In the old days at West Ham, the days when on Sunday evenings pubs didn't open until 7, the bellringers dutifuly went to the first half hour of Evensong, sitting in the few by the door next to the radiator.

Perhaps there is a line of demarcation between crashing about in 'practices' and more adequately demanding ringing. — DRJA Dewar

This is self fulfilling because more experienced ringers are less likely to support practices that are either badly run or feature bad ringing, which just makes them worse. The more experienced ringers focus on ringing with each other, and the elevator stops stopping on intermediate floors.

I had a conversation with my in-laws about whether it was always thus, and they said that it used to be the case that the great and the good of an association would be actively involved in the running of the association and ringing at practices. Now it is less common I think. I remember when I was learning that the best ringers and leading lights in the Stafford Archdeaconry Society did support Society practices, and I knew that if I went and impressed them then I might get asked into things (which did indeed happen). If the most experienced ringers in your area are not supporting local general practices then ask yourselves why not.

I think for practices at this level to work they have to be focused rather than general, and have to have experienced ringers specifically invited to go to them. We gave up general practices in the St Martin's Guild some time ago, and we now only have practices which are for specific purposes or for specific people, and the helpers are invited. A practice would not go ahead if there were insufficient experienced helpers. It is quite common to have very experienced ringers at such practices because they know they will be of value.

I understand one of the things that is causing a lot of extra work at the NHLF at the moment is reconsidering all the grants awarded where building cost inflation in particular has resulted in a funding gap compared with when the orginal grant was agreed. For instance this has happened to the CCT on their Old Black Lion project - such a long time has elapsed from the award of the grant to actually getting to a position of being able to draw it down that the grant request needed to go up more than 10%.

It must be getting difficult on bell projects, which tend to have a long period of time between getting quotes from bell firms and contractors, to actually getting the money and proceeding, for any supplier to accept inflation risk and give a fixed price.

On a point of fine tuning — Alan C

In defence, it is very difficult to think on your feet when being interviewed on live radio. You spend the next few hours wishing you had used slightly different words, or making an additional point in a particularly clever way, but you don't get a chance to go back and edit it!

that only if you are competent can you relax enough to last a peal, — John Harrison

or indeed only if you are competent are you likely to get asked into said peal

That's a very good answer. I have been thinking about how to answer my own question since asking it.

It is difficult to understand the attraction of peal ringing until you've rung quite a few. The best and most challenging ringing I do is in peals, because most of the best ringers I ring with also ring peals for the same reason. Peal ringing does improve the ringing of most of those who do it. That said, there are established bands who enjoy quarter peal ringing for the same reason - because they get good ringing. I was at AJB's funeral on Tuesday and he loved his QP ringing and rang about 3500. So that was probably when he got his best ringing.

An aspect of peal ringing that has not yet been mentioned is the exploration of composition that is not possible in smaller lengths, but this is particularly for more difficult stuff and on more bells. There isn't really a quarter peal equivalent of the challenge and beauty of ringing 147 minor, 23 spliced, Cyclic Spliced Maximus, and the ringing tends to get better the harder you make it because the ringers are more experienced. The analogy with Test Cricket over shorter forms of the game was good, but I would also draw an analogy with the Symphony over shorter pieces of music - a Symphony gives you time and scope to explore far more. 3000 changes would probably be enough though, and although I have put forward the idea of 3000 being a good target, I have yet to had the courage to organise one.

So on to whether the drop in peal ringing matters or not. At the moment there is a body of ringers ringing a lot of peals together who have retired early in good health and with good pensions. That is the group who are particularly causing there to be a greater concentration of peals rung by a smaller number of ringers. That will work its way out of the system and the peal numbers will drop, but that in itself will not make much difference because that ringing is not putting much back (generally). It is people who like ringing together doing so because they can. That generation will not happen again until something fundamental changes.

We have definitely passed 'peak peal' - future generations are unlikely to ring as many, but it I don't think it will fall away catastrophically, particularly because the children of ringers will be brought up wanting to do it and they will encourage others.

Generally I don't think so. Some of the most prolific peal bands at the moment are all people in their 70s. There is a demographic blip there in terms of people who have been able to retire on time or early on good final salary pensions and in good health who are able to do lots of peal ringing. I don't think following generations are going to have that luxury and that will also impact peal ringing.

I extrapolated the chart of the decline in peal ringing and peal ringing finishes in 2050! Which is about when i expect to give up anyway.

I agree - it's a combination of raising awareness generally of ringing, what it's like, why its enjoyable, etc, but enabling local recruitment. It should be possible to make it easier to run local recruitment campaigns.

It is a really good idea and hits a really common need. To have kept it going to 18 years is exceptional. Did all the burden of organisation fall on Geoff or did it start to be more sustainable? We tried it in the St Martin's Guild but it dried up.

One of the challenges is hooking up people wanting to learn to ring with people able to teach them and then get them into a band (we all know that).

I was teaching someone this morning (my daughter was teaching his wife under the supervision of an experienced teacher) at the Birmingham School of Ringing. I asked him what had attracted him to ringing and he said he had heard an item on the radio after Christmas about there being a shortage of bellringers, they had thought it sounded like an interesting new thing to do, got home and searched for where to learn to ring, found the St Martin's Guild, emailed, and now are being taught on a Saturday morning with (at the moment) three other learners at various stages. How can we get to the point where their experience is the norm rather than, as I suspect, the exception?

What those two people reacted to must have been more towards the first of the three descriptions in the title of this thread. I don't remember exactly what the radio piece said but it was basically about there being a shortage of bellringers - that's the sort of thing that makes a story. Imagine how many more people might want to learn if they got the third of those three messages, combined with knowing what is involved and been able to make an assessment that it might suit them well. But then there needs to be a really good way of channeling those people into a system that will meet their expectations.

(I will forgive one of this couple for saying "I guessed you must be either Charlie's dad or grandad"!)

Interesting to see that Hobart got on ABC News with a story that ringing is so popular that they have started a waiting list for learning
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-22/hobart-bellringers-st-davids-cathedral-how-to-ring-the-bells/101877920?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web

and what that leads to is very inefficient 'sending of the elevator back down'. In a perfect world you would only send the elevator down say 10 floors, but what actually happens is you get extremely experienced ringers teaching bell handling rather than helping at the surprise major practice. No one grumbles about it, but it would be better if everyone just did a bit of helping of the tier below them.