Ringing Forums

Is ringing about the dedicated pursuit of technical excellence (at whatever level one's natural talents permit), or should it be a stress-free leisure activity?
Is that a fair distinction, or is it more complicated than that? — Tom Ridgman

. I would go further than Tom. Even if the distinction is valid, setting them up as binary alternatives isn’t. Doing anything long term, especially if it’s hard, requires motivation, which must come in part from the enjoyment/satisfaction of doing it. So it can’t be ‘achieve or enjoy’. And stress is a continuum not binary. To remain healthy our minds and bodies need some stress to stimulate us but not too much to overload us.
As individuals we can choose to opera age anywhere within our safe stress range, depending on personal priorities and competing factors, but a team couldn’t function if all its members just make purely personal choices. Things wouldn’t go well if one member of a rousing eight decided to have a rest after a couple of minutes for example. In a mixed ability band there haas to be some give and take at both ends. The more capable/keen membership accept they’d can’t achieve as much as they might in a more capable band and the less keen/capable accept that they will need to try a bit harder to support the team.
Off coursed that assumes they knowingly signed up for the same thing. If half thee team joined expecting just to turn up for the occasional Saturday kick around and the other half expected to competed in the local league, none of therm will be happy.
So what sort of team do ringers think they are signing up to? What pitch were they given when they were recruited? Were the band’s objectives made clear? Was the goal of method ringing stated? Were performance skills emphasised? Was there talk of shared commitment as well as social bonding?
In short were they invited to join a group of skilled performers, who support each other’s progress, and whose performances include a regular Sunday morning commitment?
Or were they given the impression that all they needed to do was turn up on Sunday, they’d soon get the hang of it (not being too specific about what was entailed in ‘it’) and everyone was jolly nice?

I agree. A lot of problems people have trying to ring methods aren’t to do with the methods themselves but with not being able to execute the required manoeuvres with minimal thought. To use a driving analogy they can’t focus on the navigation, or even being aware of where they are, because they can’t make the car go round a corner when they want, and spend time looking for where the clutch pedal is.
Driving has to become second nature before you can effectively navigate round an obstacle course.

I never said it was, I said it was common practice — John de Overa

What I read was: ‘Yes we do, it's understandable as it's the easiest way’.
I wasn’t just talking about ‘putting right’, which is quite late in the instruction process.
However, when putting people right it shouldn’t be what’s easiest but what’s most likely to be effective, see 12.2e at: https://jaharrison.me.uk/thb/12-2.html#12-2

the instructions we give are very much on looking at a bell - follow that bell, look at that bell….. it's understandable as it's the easiest way — John de Overa

The easiest way to do what? Not the easiest way to develop core change ringing skills like appreciating and being able to control speed and position. It distracts from them.

Seeing my garbled text I have to apologise for not spotting and correcting it. The combination of my typing on an iPad and the infernal built in algorithms can produce some bizarre results.

Understand the concept and be able to dodge accurately when required — Phillip George

I woukd go further and generalise that to being abler to make the required manoeuvre accurately when required. Dodging is not the only manoeuvre, and the skill deficiencies that Leeds to poorer dodging also lead to poor leading, poor turn round at the back and sloppy place making.

Stop being lazy - stop looking at the floor just because that's how your teachers ring — Phillip George

That’s not laziness, and good ringers washout are accused of it are not looking at the floor. Their gaze happens to be directed slightly downward but they are taking in the whole visual field, sand that is easier to do without individual ropes in the highly sensitive area in thee centre of your visual field.
We should be tyeazching news ringers not too look art (trees) but to starred ahead and take in the whole wood.

Societies should encourage voting to be informed, so anyone voting should be able to do so woth full knowledge of relevant facts. From that it follows that there are two different cases:

If a topic is to be discussed in a meeting, all those eligible to vote should have the opportunity to hear the dedbate before voting, which means thee must bed present either in person or online. Obv ly you can’t force people to listen, or even stay Assamese, but you can try.
But where a vote is not preceded by a debate, and relevant facts have already been made available, there is no need to allow stand alone voting.
An obvious example is the election of officers. Normally the only facts provided are the candidates’ names, so no arguments to be listened to. Sometimes a little is said about candidates, their track record and/or whazt they cash bring to the role. That’s not a debate and the summaries could just as readily bee posted beforehand (as they are for CC officers and most professional bodies). In fact it would be better for ringing societies to do that. It would salve merging time. It would encourage more members to taker part.

once I'd got to the blag-my-way-through-PB5-by-bell-number stage and realised what was needed to progress any further. I had to go back to basics and greatly improve my existing skills — John de Overa

Why do we have so many who get to that stage without the basic skills? Many of them don’t have the insight or determination to unlearn the wrong way of doing it and go back to basics, which is why do many are stuck. We shouldn’t be leading 6hem down that path in the first place.

The ringing community is pretty good at getting people up to PB level, but it generally falls apart after that — John de Overa

I think one of the reasons is that ‘up to Bob Doubles’ on the mental front isn’t accompanied by the range of competences needed to ‘ring a method’. They can just about struggle through PB5 without those skills, but add an extra bell to the mix, or an extra feature to navigate, and they can’t cope.

I spent a lot more time on the end of a rope during COVID — John de Overa

So did I. I learnt Zanussi. Having a dumbbell and simulator at home meant I could fit in a course whenever I had a spares 20 minutes.

we have to ring with the band we have — John de Overa

Yes, we do. And it’s far more difficult to get results with people who didn’t have the ideal skills grounding. But if we keep teaching new ringers the same way we will always be in that position.

I know of one teacher who point blank refuses to teach other than primarily by rhythm, with ropesight second, and CCs are banned. It causes all sorts of problems as soon as they ring anywhere else. — John de Overa

That is clearly wrong. A rounded ringer needs all the skills. I don’t advocate only teaching rhythm and listening, I advocate establishing it first, so it can get a foothold. We are visual animals, and if the first experience of trying to ring a bell related to anything external is being told to ‘pull after that rope’, a reactive action at the last minute, it’s hardly surprising they don’t tend to think several seconds ahead based on what the bell feels like, and find it too difficult to concentrate on a rather confusing sound, at a different time from when they ‘pull’, and which feels like a distraction from the already difficult task of ‘follow that rope’.

as they start by ringing rounds, seeing / following is inevitable — John de Overa

Only if you choose to do things in that order. People I teach become competent ringing rounds before they have to integrate ropesight and coping with the variability of other ringers.

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CCs are the next step and they are all about following bell numbers. — John de Overa

Which is one of the reasons Gordon Lucas said they were not a sensible step on the route to learning tithe skills to ring methods. Read what he said in the Kaleidoscope book - the rationale not just the popular exercises.

We also drill in to people from the very start that ringing by "Follow X" — John de Overa

We shouldn’t (and I don’t). Blame the teachers not the pupils.

you can't force people, particularly adults — John de Overa

Agreed. But you can expose them to the right things in the right order. I have never had a pupil who couldn’t progress from solo bell control to rounds with a simulator with no visuals.

we have agreed as a band that we want to learn and get better together, — John de Overa

I think that’s is fundamental. One of the commonest reasons I hear for why bands don’t achieve much is that they aren’t interested in progressing. That’s normally couched in terms of not wanting to learn fancy methods but in practice i think it imbues everything, including even ringing simple methods well. And once the collective mindset is established it affects new ringers who either adopt it themselves or leave.

we get people ringing Rs & CCs with the band as soon as possible — John de Overa

How soon? Before they can ring steadily and hold to a rhythm?

they then tend to freak out if they can't see bells — John de Overa

That tends to confirm that they have been conditioned to rely on ‘seeing who to follow’ and then making a last minute action just after they do so, which undermines any sense of rhythm they might have acquired. And when they fail to look at the right rope, or it’s not there, they have no means’s of knowing where to place their next blows, even approximately.

it's an incorrect assertion anyway. Abel (and I believe all the other simulator packages) support a "moving ringers" display, — John de Overa

You don’t have to turn it on, and when I started using simulators to teach I didn’t have a screen, let alone pictures of ringers.
For initial teaching I never do turn on visuals because my aim, as stated previously, is to help the learner develop confidence in using their rhythm and listening skills before they are exposed to the visual element, which tends to dominate and crowd them out.

But I think visuals do have their place, — John de Overa

Agreed vision has its place. Ropesight is a most valuable skill for understanding what is happening around you.
Ironically the focus on following the rope in front, which many people teach and learners tend to adopt if thrown in at the deep end without already having developed rhythm an listening, inhibits the development of effective ropesight because narrowing the vision onto individual ropes makes it hard to see the overall pattern.

on a bell with a tied Clapper. You ring a bell whilst Abel simulates the other bells. At first this is very difficult to do, because you are ringing from sound alone, without seeing the position of other ropes. — Brian Plummer

I think that is more true of people who have already rung with other people and become dependent on seeing other ropes. I get learners ringing with the simulator on their own before the try to ring with other ringers, and it doesn’t seem to cause a great problem.
Doing that let’s them develop confidence in their rhythm and listening in a controlled environment before they have to cope with the additional task of making sense of lots of ropes, and the pressure of ringing with lots of other people.
IMHO ringing simulators are grossly under utilised. They are cheaper to acquire, and easier to use than when I first rang with one over 45 years ago.

tune ringing may be an anathema to those change ringers steeped in our Victorian culture, — Roger Booth

Current ringing culture certainly inherits some features from the Victorians, notably service ringing and territorial societies, but that hardly applies to change ringing. The Victorians promoted it but it began a couple of centuries before them

not many that have gone beyond just trying a cafe at the back of the nave — Simon Linford

We have that, following recent restoration to make the space more suitable for community use. We also hire the church for a lot of concerts and other events.
Wokingham Methodist church also extended its buildings to form the Bradbury Centre, of which the church proper is just a part, and used for some events.
Adelaide Baptist church in Glasgow used to run a B&B in its buildings, which I used for many years, and other things. The B&B stopped several years ago but I don’t know why.

at each practice people write their names in the attendance book. We’ve done that for years, I suspect well before all safeguarding came along.
Sometimes we also write down what was rung.
That’s the easy bit. Totting up the number at each event is easy too s we can compare over the years. When we were thinking about the best time to for Saturday practices it helped to see whether morning, afternoon or evening got better attendance. (There was no pattern, all had high and lows.)
The analysis by individual took quite a bit of work to transcribe the information into a spreadsheet. I first did it to compare pre and post Covid. Having got the framework in place it was less effort to add another year.