Final preparations are being made for the Council weekend in Nottingham, although generally this has been too much to do by too few people, with considerable strain. We’ll get there though. Still outside our control is the weather, as it will be nice if Roadshow attendees in particular can spill out into the open air. Online booking for the Roadshow element on Sunday is closed, but tickets will still be available on the door, priced at £10 for adults and free for under-18s.

The whole event is on the campus of Nottingham Trent University, where researchers have just revealed that children ask “are we nearly there yet” on average 30 minutes into a journey, and start fighting after just over an hour, and that “talking to them and giving them food” helps. I am sure that all of our speakers at the Roadshow will come up with more valuable bits of research than that!

I got my accommodation information from NTU. This will be my second stay in university accommodation in a month after experiencing Myerscough College on the North West Course. Myerscough included chainsaws on the list of prohibited items in bedrooms – NTU only bans joss sticks and incandescent burners, so anyone planning to bring their chainsaw to the Council weekend should be OK.

A recent addition to the Council’s army of volunteers is Helen Fuller-Whelan, who has taken over from Dave Bassford as one of our two safeguarding officers. Helen’s safeguarding experience comes from a career in the police force, and complements Ann White’s experience in social care. Much of what our safeguarding officers do is unseen and invaluable, and few know how significant Dave’s contribution has been over the last few years. He retires with our thanks.

I started a poll on Facebook to see whether ringers have two ringing parents, no ringing parents, or one, based on someone’s observation that very few younger ringers in particular seemed to have just one ringing parent. The initial result showed more people with no ringing parents though, and I am going to repeat the exercise with young ringers to see if that’s different.

This is not pointless research (just in case you were wondering). Just thinking about ringing marketing and how you get to non-ringing parents. At the CC Executive meeting last Saturday we formally appointed design, marketing and branding agency Yellowyoyo (try saying that quickly) as our partner – “a talented team of inspiring, curious people delivering world class, relevant ideas”. The world is now quite different even to what it was when the Council last commissioned research in how to brand and market ringing. The primary channels to one of our target audiences were not invented then and the demographic profile of ringing has moved on.

Maybe lessons can be learned from South Yorkshire where ringers in the Doncaster area have now got ten previously silent towers ringing again, using ART’s Learning the Ropes scheme. A picture was posted in the Ringing Teachers Facebook group of a new band at Holy Trinity Wentworth, with eight ringers sporting smart polo shirts. Their training is including belfry maintenance so they can look after the bells they now enjoy ringing.

ART is offering a package to help universities attract and retain more new ringers, part of their drive to train young ringing teachers. The offer comprises financial help with the cost of hiring a mobile belfry, mini-ring or Wombel for use at their Freshers Fair, free Learning the Ropes logbooks for use with their new recruits, and a free ART Teacher Training course for six of their members. Eleven universities have expressed an interest for this year so it is being treated as a pilot and can be built on for 2023, when of course there will be at least one more mobile belfry available.

I used to think that the pages of Central Council report that got published in the Ringing World after an AGM should have been on unnumbered perforated paper for quick removal from an otherwise interesting magazine. I was of the opinion that it was of limited interest. Maybe the number who read it is limited but it has been suggested that there is a ‘highlights’ version, or “‘need-to-know’ bullet points for the ordinary ringer”. We’ll do it. Maybe one for the incoming secretary who cannot yet say no!

Following a suggestion and offer of help, we have agreed to set up a group within the V&L Workgroup specifically to look at how we support focus on improvement or at least appreciation of good striking, and the associated skill of listening. This is an area the Council has done a lot on in the past – when I was on the Education Committee, John Harrison and others were regularly running listening skills courses, and his ‘Listen to Ringing’ CDs are still in the CC shop.

There is more that can be done though, especially in using up-to-date tools like phone apps to help develop listening skills. The new leader of the Technical and Taxonomy Workgroup, Tina Stoecklin (who takes over at the end of this Council meeting), will find my specification of a phone-based game-play style listening skills app in her Inbox.

The next big thing I need to do for the Council AGM is the ‘Forward Plan’, a presentation of what the Council Executive plans to do in the next year. I am looking forward to the next full face-to-face meeting with Workgroups in November when we are going to revisit the Council’s Strategic Priorities. We have been told that we should not give up on the idea of a single direct membership organisation for ringing just because it looks too difficult. Yellowyoyo’s initial research of the ringing landscape led them to say “it’s all a bit disjointed isn’t it?”. Maybe it’s a ten-year plan, or “before this decade is out” – that may make it clearer how it can be done.

Simon Linford
President CCCBR