Ringing Forums

I foresee this disengagement leading to a reduction in the the YACR's membership roll. — Peter Sotheran

I can't speak for Yorkshire, but based on experience here I question some of Peter's implicit accumptions. Members who never take part in any society activity are already disengaged. Handing over a sub when asked to someone in your own tower does not constitute engagement with the society.
And in a tower where societ membership is expected, paying the sub (which in nthe grand scheme of things is trivial) is probably seen as tower loyalty rather than anything wider.
For several years we've been getting requests to pay direct by bank transfer from people who prefer not to carry cash. We resisted that because the risk of payments not matching up with membership lists from towers could have made the Treasurer's job more difficult, but with an online system membership renewal and subs payment can be integrated.
The need for a conscious action to renew membership might reduce roles slightly, but those lost will be the disengaged.. ODG membership went down about 4% in 2025 when online renewal was introduced but has gone up a bit in 2026, but in any case that's within the historic year to year variation.
Looking at it from the society perspective, try to increzse engagement by all means, but if you can't, what value is there in membership numbers being inflated by with people who are members in name only?

we too used to get attendances of 30+ for monthly Branch practices 40 years ago, and they were predictable- 6-9pm on the 3rd Saturday. But predictable time or not we wouldn’t get that many now. Other things have changed since then. And distance isn’t an issue, all our towers are within 8 miles of me. However, most practices are just ringing with no meeting, so the boringness or otherwise isn’t an issue either. The lack of engagement of about half our members seems to be driven by something else.

The CC has used workshop format meetings.
Under the old regimme, most years there was an Open Meeting the day before the Council meeting when a hot topic would be debated at length. As the name suggests they were open to anyone to take part. Sometimes they were stand alone (eg in 2000 I ran one on what we had learnt from the Millennium recruitment drive) and at other times they expllored a topic that was on the eganda for the meeting, for example in 2016 over Council reform. Generally they worked well and were useful.
The nearest there has been under the new regime is short sessions before the main meeting where workgroup activity can be discussed but in practice they were more 'presentation + questions than debate. There have also been sessions on the morning after, which were less rushed but still not really a debate.
The Council is responding (perhaps over reacting) to criticism that meetings were too long, and to the desire to offer something else. Inevitable adding a mini roadshow and/orlocal training events into the same total time squeezes the business, especially if you reatain the traditional tower grab.

people can now choose to be part of a workgroup ... this leaves some reps ‘only’ turning up once a year to represent and not actively contributing or questioning what’s being done — Lucy Chandhial

There have always been Council members who 'only turn up once a year'. Even when Council committees were staffed entirely by Council members around 60% did not serve on a committee.
When members were only fed information once a year they could be forgiven for focusing their contribution on the meeting weekend, but now that the Executive has to report every month as well as annually, there are more opportunities to ask questions and if necessary take action. That oversight role is now more important with the Council run by a more powerful Executive.
That role doesn't need 200 people and I suspect being part of such a large group dilutes the feeling of individual responsibility. A smaller meeting would also cost less, and the dynamic of a 'meeting room' would be different from that of a 'lecture theatre'.

a lot of time and effort was spent on Ring for the King with little long term impact from what I can see, — Robert Brown

The research I reported in The Ringing World a while ago suggests thatbig recruitment drives do not have a lasting effect. If you didn't see it there's a copy at: https://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/RecruitmentDrives.pdf

dinosours carrying on as normal, looked what happened to them. — Robert Brown

That’s not a very good analogy. The dinosaurs were very successful, and survived for hundreds of millions of years. That’s far longer then we’ve been around and on current showing we won’t last anything like as long.

if CCCBR meetings do not meet the 'value' criteria they will not be supported — Phillip George

The Robles with the current format is that a weekend away for lots of people, with ringing and entertainment thrown in, does provide value to those who go. Whether a meeting of 200 people who might or might not have read the reports, provides value, to the Exercise or as the culmination of the function of scrutinising the Executive, is a separate question.

the phrase that comes to mind is Turkeys and Christmas — Robert Brown

I was tempted to use that phrase!

agreed reform hasn’t gone as far as it could. Direct membership is hard to make the transition, so not too surprising it keeps getting put into the too difficult box, but failure to reduce the size of the Council would have been easy to do, and I was surprised the way the Council reverted to type on that.
But we have had a lot more reform than anyone might have predicted before I lit the blue touch paper ten years ago. Maybe the glass is half full rather than half empty.

Many more people can choose exactly when they work, or shop online at any time so the rigidity of the ringing calendar might not appeal so much when there are other things on offer. — Tristan Lockheart

I’m not sure that follows. Surely flexible commitments are easier to fit round fixed events.

I was curious about what practices you are offering your members — Roger Booth

Each month we offer:
1 - Traditional general Saturday practice. Varies between am & late pm. Replaced some months by AGM and striking competition
2 - General Tuesday afternoon practice
3 - Elementary practice
4 - Focused intermediate practice
5 - Advanced practice
We also run regular youth practices jpint with other branches but they are run seprately.
Demand for practices can vary from a lot to not enough so before each we ask who intends to be there and then either confirm or cancel depending on the response.. Out of 55 potential practices (excluding youth events, which are run separately) in 2025 we confirmed 42 and cancelled 13. Interestingly the least popular (5 of the 13 cancellations) is the traditional Saturday general practice.
The website (currently off line after the Guild server was attacked) has reports on attendance, but I've put a copy of the graph for 2025 at: https://jaharrison.me.uk/Temp/2025Attend.jpg NB although the key includes youth practices they aren't shown because I don't have a record of them.

Are we not wandering into a completely different matter here? — Nick C Cronin

Yes. Apologies for doing so. I was replying to someone else’s comment. On an email list I would have changed the subject line but not sure how to do the equivalent on the forum.

Is there not a case for the CCCBR to evolve into a truly National association of ringers — Mike Shelley

Yes, but it keeps getting kicked into the long grass because it’s difficult to work out how to get from where we are now to there. The topic has come up several times since the original proposal in the 1880s. When it came up in 2014 I produced this: https://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/MemberOrgn.pdf It was also in the CRAG recommendation, but as noted above, no on has yet been able to make it happen.
Ideas on a postcard.

I suspect that most see themselves as members of the local Association / Guild — Mike Shelley

I suspect many don’t even do that, but just see themselves as members of a tower or maybe the local district. Half of the guild members in our district didn’t attend any of the 50 or so practices etc that we run during the year.

Several Guilds and Associations have been conducting reviews of how they operate — Roger Booth

ODG also been doing this over the last year or so, with the result of the first stage to be voted on at the AGM in a couple of weeks. The change is more following the CC than Bedford though. Documents on ODG website: odg.org.uk if anyone is interested.

Engagement is about more than voting. As others have said, if the ability to vote is divorced from engaging with the debate it can undermine the process.
Detached voting works for things like elections, where there’s not normally debate, and can be better if accompanied by position statements.
Where there is debate the logical way to increase engagement would be a hybrid meeting. Where travel is an issue, which it can be for larger societies, then it could increase engagement. But if engagement is already weak it could decrease in person attendance, with people taking the easy option.
It might be better to start by asking why member engagement is low in the first place.

to teach a complete beginner from a bell-down position rather than a bell-up position. I now believe this is how people in my situation should have been taught in the first place — Corinne Orde

I always start the first lesson with the bell down and it does indeed enable some problems to be tackled in a safe, non threatening environment. In my teens i taught lots of people starting with the bell down before I knew there was another way to do it. I first saw someone being taught starting with a bell up when at university, and I thought it looked rather dangerous.

My bad habit was there from the outset and we tried everything we could to stop it, with all manner of exercises using dummy tail ends etc and daily individual lessons for weeks on end — Corinne Orde

The best way to work on problems with hand transfer is with a static rope, starting slowly and gradually speedily up, before doing it with a moving rope.

His teaching was fine — it was more a case of me being so terrified of the quickly moving rope — Corinne Orde

You can’t expect to learn if you are terrified. Helping you to feel comfortable with what you are doing is a key part of the teaching process.

it took me nearly three years to eradicate that common “waving right hand” fault that many new ringers have. — Corinne Orde

Far better of course to avoid it in the first place by proper teaching, rather than trying to undo a habit that has been repeatedly practised and become automatic.
Have you looked at The New Ringer’s Book? There’s a lot of detail on the basic mechanics and how to get them right.

Yes, once some people feel they are no longer "raw learners" it becomes almost impossible to get them to work on it — John de Overa

The first order effect is that you can't help them, and so they continue to degrade the ringing in which they take part. But the second order effect is worse. The fear of offending deters anyone with ueful insights from sharing them with anyone, including those who might be receptive.

If you haven't already discovered it, you might like to encourage your ringers to look at Ringing Skills