The discussion topic this time around was how to run a successful #bellringing practice. First off was to identify the different types of practices from ones with few ringers, to those with lots of ringers, district practices when you don’t know what everyone’s capability is, virtual practices, young people practices, and themed practices.

Practices with only a few ringers gives plenty of rope time to those learning.  It also gives opportunity for more experienced ringers to practice conducting or teaching or having a go at running the practice. However, those with a lot of ringers has the opposite issue with trying to get everyone to have their fair share of rope time. It can be difficult to accommodate everyone’s needs.  For those types of practice everything needs to run super tightly to avoid wasted time.

Virtual practices provide scope for practicing theory and can be quick, focussed sessions, and even on a 1-2-1 basis now that Wheatley is integrated.

Practices for young people can be a challenge as they get so easily distracted and are used to making progress quickly and moving on to the next thing.  Its important then to have lesson plans mapped out so they know what they’re moving on to next.  And of course, you’ll need to engage with the parents, especially as you don’t want to end up just being a kiddie day care facility.

Themed practices can be great for focussing on a specific issue, technique like raising and lowering a bell, listening skills, conducting practice, but remember to alternate it with proper touches of something else so people don’t get bored, especially if you have visitors.

Organising and planning seems to be the key.  Agree goals with individuals and the whole band, have a structure and progression plan for each ringer, but also what you want to achieve as a band e.g. entering a striking competition, or ringing a quarter peal.  But don’t feel you have to take all of this on your own. Enlist help. Other members of the band can act as assistants in getting people ready for the next touch, standing behind people, sitting with someone when they’re not ringing to help them through some theory, and they can act as front of house meeters and greeters.

Creating the right atmosphere will help people come back.  If there is a learning environment where people progress, where there is constructive criticism, a warm welcome, a good social life, and plenty of cake and chocolates, this will support a great practice.

Understanding what makes people tick is useful but be decisive and have standards.  Most ringers would prefer to ring something simple well than something more complicated badly.

And don’t forget to keep yourself interested and learning.  Be the behaviour you want to see in others.

What is the golden formula for attracting new #bellringing recruits, and more to the point, keeping them?  That’s the million-dollar question.

Fortunately, there is a plan.  A ten-point plan in fact.

1. Raise awareness – let people know the bells are there, and about to begin service and practice ringing again soon.  Advertise ringing times by dropping leaflets through church neighbours’ doors.  Place articles in parish news, on local facebook groups, social media and word of mouth.
2. What do you want to achieve? – how many recruits are you looking for?  What are the bands aspirations?  Do you have the skills within the tower to teach and develop others?  You may need to work with your incumbent, and others towers and ringing teachers.
3. Who do you want to recruit? – this needn’t just be through the traditional route of the congregation.  Community groups, friends and family, schools and universities, retirees, uniformed groups, wedding couples, lapsed ringers.
4. What are you going to do? – advertise, make reference to what’s going on, bring a friend, targeting groups, give online talks and have a go sessions.
5. Publicity – be specific in the message, use the right medium, clear call to action and use all communications channels available.
6. Holding a successful event – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.  If another tower had a great event find out what worked, what didn’t work and how it went.  Use all the recruitment resources available.
7. The follow up – make it quick, personal, get them engaged early and signed up for something else e.g. come a long to a social event to meet everyone.
8. Intensive training – progress will only be made where there is frequent and timely training.  Hold special practices or run a Saturday school.  Learners will make quicker progress and feel more satisfied.  Make sure they have a positive and enthusiastic experience.
9. Keeping interest – get your learner assimilated into the band as soon as possible, be inclusive, set targets and goals, invite to social activities.
10. Making it work for everyone – keep your established ringers interested and involved in the planning, events, teaching or making the tea; everyone can have a role to play.  Make it worthwhile them being there.

Being friendly, welcoming and giving a good first impression helps attract new ringers.  Inclusivity regardless of ability, the chance to try something new, focus on learning but sharing experience as a learner helps keep them.  Making good use of existing ringers’ skills will support both recruits and existing band members and keep everyone motivated and engaged.

Cake is also a great way to attract and keep ringers!

When we return to #bellringing, some ringers may have different expectations of their ability to what is the reality.  Some have had over a year now of not ringing a bell, or not ringing with others.  The physical and mental agility required, muscle memory, will have lapsed.

We are encouraged to make an assessment of our band to see what it might look like.  Some people may not return at all, some may decide to ring less often, some may be super keen to be back on the end of a rope.  We need to take stock of who is coming back, who is not and what their current ability is rather than their former ability.

Things to take into account would be individuals’ attitudes to risk and safety: age, health, vaccinated or not, current legislation, physical fitness, recalling methods.  This will create new dynamics in the ringing room with a mismatch of ability and knowledge.  This could lead to demotivation and demoralisation.

The brain processes different types of memories:

• procedural i.e. swimming, something complex and likely to stay in the memory longer as it took longer to learn;
• decorative memories are simpler, fact that have been learned but easier to forget.

The more experienced ringer would find it easier to return, but this is not the same for newer learners who haven’t clocked up the rope time prior to lockdown.

Overtime we forget things.  Scientific studies have proven that over the course of half a day we are likely to have forgotten about 20% of what we’ve just learned.  After about five days, we are likely to only be able to remember around 15%.  It is therefore key to have regular recapping sessions that will help retain more.

We can identify if someone has learnt something through questioning, observation, digging deeper to understand, but should allow time to think and recall answers. 

This discussion suggested ways to support individual learning with bell control exercises, setting the bell on command, whole pull and stand etc.  With groups peer support for both teachers and learners is invaluable, as is the social network.  Exercises that support listening skills, developing rope sight could include mini striking competitions, recording the ringing and giving feedback, getting the learner to call the call changes so they know what’s coming up, standing behind, covering,

It is important to take small steps when we get back in the tower but important to:

• make it enjoyable and satisfying;
• take small management steps;
• encourage;
• provide opportunities.

This session tended to focus more on learners and teaching foundations skills but didn’t really do into much detail about how to manage expectations of more experienced bands. Some will think that they are able to get straight into complex method ringing, and may not realise that others, or even themselves, need a bit more time getting used to things again. 

Ringing quarter peals and peals is also going to take some time to get back into the swing of.  The longest C and I have rung during our Sunday morning ding and dong sessions is about five minutes each time. To ring a whole course of Surprise Maximus takes about 20 minutes, and on heavy bells that you’re not used to ringing any longer, would probably be enough to do someone in for the rest of the evening.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Sunday’s topics in the Recovery Convention were how to re-establish ringing in your village band by Debbie Phipps.  The second was on getting your bells and tower in order ready for return by Alison Hodge.  Both were very well attended sessions, with over 100 people connected to the first session and over 80 for the second.

My take aways from the first session were around ideas for engaging with community and retaining ringers.  Where I ring was not really known as a teaching tower and with only five members of our own band, most of the work in recruiting and teaching falls to me and C. I had mentioned at a previous tower AGM I felt if we didn’t do something about recruitment and teaching, #bellringing at our tower would stop when we stopped.  We relied on people coming from nearby towers to help us ring on Sunday mornings, and lots of visitors to support our practice night.

When we return to the tower its going to be difficult to ring all our bells to start with.  We have 12 bells and the heaviest weights over 34 cwt.  Ringers would have lost some physical strength, and as an ageing group, some may not be able to ring the bells they could a year ago. That’s before we start to ring methods and trying to remember things we could ring without thinking about it previously.

The second session was about getting bells and towers in order ready to ring again.  It covered making sure you have preliminaries in order; discussed things with the incumbent, conducted risk assessments, health and safety, and made sure other policies were up to date.  

Before starting maintenance, it was noted to make sure people are competent to undertake the checks and maybe include a church warden or someone to help out. It was important to make sure you are appropriately kitted out with PPE, the lights work, and you had a headlamp, pen and paper, camera and working mobile phone in case of incidents.

It was important to keep good records of what had been checked, what other observations were made and what actions were undertaken or need to be undertaken.  It was a good idea to inform the church afterwards. It was advised that an external visual inspection be made as well as checking steps, ladders, trap doors and floors, look for signs of damage, unauthorised access, damp or water leaks.  A systematic inspection of each bell from top to bottom would give a good view of bolts, clappers, headstocks, wheels, sliders, stays, bearings, ropes, pulleys.  The speaker also mentioned tidying up the overall environment like removing out of date notices and sweets or biscuits and prepare to welcome ringers back.

I was not overly interested in the maintenance side of #bellringing, but this was a good high-level overview of some simple activities that we should do.

It was good to hear some new ideas or concepts, and things that make sense.

Starting yesterday two #bellringing organsations were presenting a series of talks designed to help the recovery of #bellringing after the pandemic.  Talks would be delivered via Zoom and take place over this weekend, every evening next week and next weekend.  Topics being covered included:

• Building better relations with church;
• Question & Answer session;
• How to re-establish ringing;
• Getting bells and towers in order;
• Managing expectations;
• Holding a successful practice;
• Developing a ringing cluster;
• Virtual beer tasting, and
• Ringing schools in town and country

As a member of the steering group, I will be attending all of them, which meant another very busy week ahead.  The first session was presented by Rev Max Drinkwater, a member of the Guild of Clerical Ringers and Rev Tony Ellis, the Guild President.  They described their role as having “a foot in both camps”.  Following a brief history of how the Guild joined the Central Council only last year, before moving on to various questions such as “why do people ring bells” and how the Guild can support ringing and make it easier for ringers to access the church authorities.

They recognised the contribution that ringers help the church, including pointing out when the church spire needed work doing to it. They were working on a document as an example of good practice for clergy and ringers to have a good and harmonious relationship.

It was noted that the church was rediscovering what it meant by “the church” itself and anyone that has a role to play in the community based in a church building is part of “the church”.  One controversial question was whether a tower captain should have to attend services.  It was recognised this would differ between churches and be part of a conversation about expectations and direction of travel, to understand if you felt that #bellringing was part of your personal worship or vocation. If they insisted you should attend church services, perhaps you should insist they visit the tower.

In one area they had arranged with their Diocesan Bishop for a #bellrinigng clergy to do a talk about bells and #bellringing to a group of non-ringing clergy.  This would be something to investigate.

I think the key take aways for me were 1. being proactive in having a conversation.  Don’t wait for the church to come to you, go to them and make the conversation happen.  It might not be with the clergy, but another member of the team who is responsible for outreach, or the communications officer. A way to get to the Diocesan Bishop might be through their Chaplain, who looks after their diary and responsible for putting important things in front of the Bishop. 2. Don’t underestimate the importance that bellringers have in the church family.