Ringing Forums

Yet we rely on older ringers. This morning, Sunday 17th March, Wells Cathedral (10 - Tenor 56 cwt), call changes on 10 as part of service ringing, the average age of the ringers of back four bells was seventy-one.

See my comments of 3 months ago in the Ringing 2030 topic which speaks to how, and perhaps why, Church of England churches are felt to 'belong' the communities they are located in. Making these churches into living community assets seems to many the way to go. Doing so would need a serious national debate. As the Establish church CofE incumbents have the care of all souls in the parishes; not just those who attend church. The right to be baptised, married, worship and have a funeral extends to all (Albeit being married in church is subject to restrictions some think wrong). Not all taxpayers will see that this justifies public support for churches and not all shades of churchmanship will be happy for 'their' churches to be used for secular purposes. The way forward is thus not easy.

Regarding selling unused bells.

Whilst there is no doubt that the legal ownership of CoE churches and bells lie with the Church of England, there persist a sense within communities of them being their churches and their bells. Cultural memory is long, as many conflicts in the world bear witness to. Generations pass down a sense of what is right and of ownership. It is my understanding that Church of England churches and their bells were largely paid for out of the tithes of the parishioners and the gifts of the gentry, for whom the parishioners often worked. Bells were and still are donated by individuals or from funds partly raised by the community, as are church and bell restorations. This feeling that church infrastructure somehow belongs to the successors of people who funded it is explainable.

As the Church Commissioners Report on the future of churches showed there is a problem of squaring the circle between the fact that communities want ‘their’ churches to remain open and who pays. The Church selling off the family bronze and then presumably the silver is not a long-term solution. Sadly, once the Church Commissioners get the taste for selling bells to raise cash, I don’t see them holding to any intention of not also selling off those where there is the capability of supporting ringing, still less investing the proceeds of such sales in ringing. The only financial constraint of them not selling bells and fittings will be that the cost of removal may exceed the scrap value of the metal.

Leadership as part of good tower governance has been a recognised issue since I joined the Volunteer and Leadership workgroup during lockdown. Tim Hine, the then workgroup leader, asked me to take on a Leadership Development role. Tim had also indicated that his 6 years as Workgroup Leader was up and he was looking for a replacement. That ended up being me. I retained the Leadership Development hat. I have found out that the Work Group Leader role is more reactive than I imagined. Leadership Development has remained on my ‘To do’ list but is continually pushed down that list by more immediate emerging tasks.

I now wish to recruit a Leadership Development Lead into the Volunteer and Leadership Work Group to develop a Ringing Leadership course that can be delivered as a one off event or as evening sessions on the various weekend ringing courses. I have started producing a course outline which a new Leadership Development Lead may, or may not, wish to build on. If you are interested in the role please contact me at vlleadatcccbrdotorgdotuk.

I also went to the W&P open day and agree with Alison that it was an excellent event. For me a key to its success was the advertised and delivered support of local ringers to ensure that there was always a band for visiting ringers to ring with. The result of this was that ringers could travel with confidence that they would get to ring on and hear the complete rings at towers they visited. As a result ringers came from far and wide and there were queues to ring at many towers I visited. The helpers you stood by to ensure that the rings could be rung may have sometimes felt redundant; they were not, without them being there the queues would not have been there.

I can only echo Alison's praise and thanks to all the W&P members who made the event work so well. It's an example of good practice that we can all learn from.

I think that the saying: "There is no such thing as bad publicity." applies. We need to raise awareness of what Bellringing is. The public need to appreciate it as skilled physical and mental activity, one that when done well is a positive contribution to the soundscape and that is more a communitarian church activity than a 'churchy' church one. When I tell people that I am a bellringer there quite a few that are surprised that bells are not rung automatically, disabusing people of that is important. Add in that it is a relatively low cost voluntary activity and you start to arose interest.

Improved awareness of ringing is a good thing in its own right, arousing interest will naturally lead to improved recruiting.

Do we need more pictures like the one of the band in this performance?

https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1541656

Recently when asked to call some call changes for the specific benefit of one learner, as well as calling up, which for reasons rehearsed above I prefer, I also told the learner which place they were in. This seems to aid their striking, as one would expect. I also reinforced that they were still in the same place when I stretched them by swapping the bells immediately below them with out initially telling them which bell they were following. Saying something like "Keep ringing at rounds pace you are still in 4th place.

This emphasises the fact that we are changing the position of bells. From memory one of the ART Stage 2 techniques is to get a band at a practice night to ringing call changes by calling which place bells are to cross. Once again stressing the relationship between knowing what place you are in, listening and striking. All this helps learners understand the change of pace required to ring well, be it method or call changes. It also makes call changes a more valuable stepping stone to method ringing, the theme of subject of a previous forum topic.

Regarding what the CCCBR should be doing, absolutely. See the task description of the CC Volunteer & Leadership Workgroup in the 2023 Diary. It starts with the words “Facilitating and encouraging …”. The challenge is doing that in way that matches what ringer want. One purpose of a new survey should be to get a good idea of what that is.

You should not need to be worried about attending towers that are populated by black-zoners. They were all learners once. e-mail the tower captain and possibly have a talk over the phone. Explain that you want to progress to 8 bell ringing and eventually Surprise Major and that you may be nervous ringing with much better ringers than yourself. Make it clear that you don't expect to get that many rings in a practice.

If you get a positive reception from the tower captain, expect to make mistakes and get constructive criticism about your striking. Talk to the tower captain about what your next step should be. It might start with Plain Bob of Grandsire and that is fine. It about finding you comfort level and then being stretched. Learn the methods they ring regularly and try to follow what a ringer in front of you is doing rather than just sitting there being bored. Don't worry if you can follow for more than a few rows to start with. it will come. This 'observing' will develop your method knowledge, 8 bell ropesight and listening skills. In fact, the ropesight will be harder as the ringer of the bell you are watching will often obscure your view. So that's a bit of 'overtraining' as eventually it will be easier to see when you are one of the band.

It is to be hoped that you are made welcome and that you can then slowly progress to become a black-zoner yourself. Sadly, if you are not made welcome you may need to look elsewhere if that is possible in your area.

Personally, I am using this approach to develop to my next level and it is slowly but surely showing results.

John

In response to your comment that "SG in general is a confused shambles.", the problem is not in the guidelines. They may be overly voluminous but they are ultimately both understandable and, in my opinion, show a reasonable balance of risk versus ability to carry out desirable activities. The problem is that they are guidelines not authoritatively imposed rules.

I have a military background were exercises involving different 'sides' are conducted using safety rules that aim to make the training achieved as realistic as possible whilst keeping personnel and material safe. These rules are set by an exercise commander and personnel are trained in there use. This model does not apply in the Church, whose tradition is that individual incumbents and PCC's have individual responsibility. Parishes have considerable licence is how they apply guidelines. If the incumbent, PCC or indeed the Parish Safeguarding Officer is particularly risk adverse and perhaps do not particularly value bell ringing then they can and do place safeguarding requirements on ringers that far exceed CofE guidelines.

As we increasingly do not have enough suitably skilled ringers to follow the historic tower based ringing model and become more peripatetic, we want common rules to many aspects of ringing that apply across the CofE; not guidelines that can be interpreted or ignored by individual parishes/cathedrals. SG in general is a confused shambles not because SG is inherently confusing, but because CofE governance is, perhaps deliberately, somewhat loose and therefore shambolic.

Having looked into safeguarding when producing our safeguarding policy the answer is pretty simple. A person who is not DBS cleared should not be supervising ringing if children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults are present. As someone in that category could turn up as an unannounced visitor, it seems very unwise to have a person who is not BDS cleared as a Tower Captain or Deputy, even if there are no children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults in the band.

If the Tower Captain knows that a member of the band has failed a DBS check then they would be ill-advised to use them as the 2nd adult needed when children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults are present.

I see no reason to ask them to leave, assuming the diocesan authorities have not banned them from being in a ringing chamber. It is then down to good leadership by the tower captain to keep an eye on their behaviour and particularly any attempt by them to arrange to meet children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults outside the tower setting. i.e grooming activities.

What you are talking about is called coursing order and is one of the cues ringers use to keep themselves, and as a conductor to keep others, right. It becomes more obvious on higher numbers and as ropesight is more difficult on higher numbers is a very useful check and also a method of putting yourself right. See http://guildfordguild.org.uk/training/ringing-concepts/coursing-order/ for more details and links to other web-pages.

Ultimately knowing which place you are in is essential to good striking, which is achieved by constantly comparing where the sound of the bell in your place is heard with where that place should sound in the row: and then adjusting next time. Ropesight, counting your places, listening and understanding how the work of different bells fit together, are all ways of maintaining situational awareness of where you are and where others are when ringing

As someone who used to navigate ships, I can tell that you need all aids to navigation you can get so that you can check that they giving you consistent answers. If they are not consistent with each other you need to do something about it. The same is true is ringing you need all the aids to navigating the method that you can get. Coursing order is one of them and well worth while getting ringers to understand.

Two comments:
1. To ring call changes well you need good bell control. Whether CC is to be what they ring for the rest of their ringing lives or if it a step towards method ringing, each change should be clean. It should not be acceptable for ringers to gradually, if at all, get their bell into the right place after a number of rows. So if you are moving a large bells down a place you will need the same bell control techniques as you do for hunting down in a method. This speaks to good CC being about ringers knowing what place they are in so they can adjust their striking being more important that knowing which bell they are following.
2. Bell control technique needs to be practiced and more regularly coached (if only we had the coaches). In most sports and musical activities much practice focuses on basic techniques: the golfer's swing or the musician's scales.

Having taken on the role of to chair the CCCBR Volunteering and Leadership (V&L) Workgroup on an interim basis until a new Workgroup leader is appointed, I have been following this discussion with interest. What has been said will feed into my thinking about how the stated activities of the V&L on the CCCBR website can be progressed. Please keep the contributions coming.

In addition to reading what’s on this forum and see what’s in the Ringing World, I also subscribe to the New Statesman, the following passage from this week’s edition stuck me as having parallels with the where we are with Median Ringers. In particular, the final clause.

“When Mr Johnson declared in his Tory conference speech last year that “We are not going back to the same broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity”, his diagnostics of Britain’s economic defects was correct. But, as was the case under his predecessor, Theresa May, analysis has not been equalled by prescription.”

We have broad consensus on the problem; now we need answers.

As a once lapsed ringer myself, the reasons for lapsing were: young family, career and yes, no support mechanism that kept ringers who could not commit that much time in touch with ringing. Now back ringing regularly I am a tower secretary, local education officer and engaged in a CCCBR Workgroup. The topics of both re-engaging with lapsed ringers and nurturing them though those demanding family and career life stages are high on those I wish to promote..

As it happens I was at a meeting of our local branch committee members talking recovery this morning. It has been suggested that we form a branch level 'Support Group' covering recruitment, retention etc. I will point my fellow committee members at the forum as a good place to start networking with others who have done or are thinking of doing something similar.

We tried one at Fridays practice with about 12 people in a reasonably sized ringing chamber with windows open on the North and South paces of the tower. Levers rose from about 400 ppm rising into the 900's by the end of the practice.

The results do however give me, and others, an excuse for making trips as quarters and peals progress, as a quick internet search on "co2 brain function" showed. This included the following link: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200421/Atmospheric-CO2-levels-can-cause-cognitive-impairment.aspx