Ringing 2030, funding, business plans, budgets, affiliation fees and International Women’s Day.  Read on McDuff…..

It has been a little while since my last blog.   What can I say?  I had run out of words or have been sending my words elsewhere. Or the time flew past, and I didn’t notice.  All of those. 

I have just come away from our quarterly meeting of the Executive and Workgroup Leads.  As usual, I came away energised and feeling positive.  This was handy, as I was also working over the weekend, and the results of that were considerably less energizing.  It also caused me to miss the final North American Guild online GatherRing, which was disappointing.  This was an event series stood up during lockdown and had talks, teaching, online ringing, and places to socialise with other ringers.   

What with being able to meet more in person, and probably a thirst for meeting in-person, there seems to be a prevailing feeling that these online ringing things have had their day.  That would be a pity.  It still offers the opportunity for multinational bands to ring together, for ringers to massively increase their network, and to improve their skills when their tower time is limited.  There are still opportunities to be had in this arena. 

Ringing 2030 

The cross collaboration between Workgroups at these meetings and elsewhere is good to see.   Coincident with the new South West Ringing Course (applications opening in May), there are plans to have a one or more mini-rings at a nearby shopping centre as a separate event but using the extra ringing for the course as an opportunity for targeted promotion.  Also noted was the fact that the Mobile Belfry Trust had started to receive queries for the Touring Tower direct from scouting organisations.  Andrea Haynes and John Lagdon formed a co-working group to help that liaison right then and there.  Fantastic. 

Last month I travelled to London to with a team from the Young Ringers for Ringing 2030 Working Group, plus representatives from the Mobile Belfry Trust and ART to work up a joint funding bid that would help to fund some of our ambitions around promoting ringing to young people and supporting young ringers.  This includes funding for more Touring Towers, finding educational partners for the Ringing in Schools lessons (tipping my hat to Andrew Slade for that idea), and funding a youth development officer.  This has now become the Funding Project team.  It was satisfying to spend a few focused hours digging into how we might best approach this, with an impressive amount of fundraising experience in the room.   

I’ll still welcome anyone who has experience in this arena, or knows of funding sources we might approach.  Get in touch:   

There is an Open Consultation on the 30th March to talk about recruitment, recruitment networks and the recruitment portal, which will be hosted by the Recruitment and Development Working Group.  Full details will appear soon on the CCCBR website, but save the date.  It will be interesting and a first opportunity to share ideas and progress on this key part of Ringing 2030. 

If you haven’t registered for this year’s ART Conference, you will be missing out on Lucy Chandial’s talk on volunteering (along with many other interesting topics).  If you are coming, I shall see you there. 

Last month we finalised the 2025 Business Plan, which should be read in conjunction with the 2025 budget published in December.  It was distributed to Council Representatives and to Association Secretaries.  And you can view it yourself on the website:  http://cccbr.info/ul8ms 

Which leads us to…….. 

Council Affiliation Fees 

After a meeting with representatives from University societies last year, we set up a team to take a hard look at the Council’s affiliation criteria and come back with recommendations for the Executive to consider.  The team has representation from universities, from at least one non-territorial society, and from territorial associations.   

To be honest, the current rules surrounding affiliation and membership are a bit messy already, and possibly some of the qualifying thresholds are a bit arbitrary.  As one Council Representative pointed out to me – no one cared about the lack of consistency until the money started getting real.    This is an opportunity to tidy up this space and create better affiliation categories, rather than a sticking plaster approach of adding yet more exceptions.     

International Women’s Day 

It happens every year on 8th March, and the theme for 2025 is Accelerate Action.  Argue all you like about whether thinking about women and equality one day in the year is a celebration or an insult; this is an opportunity to dust off those good intentions and give them some action. 

Since my involvement with the amazing Women in Ringing working group 6 years ago, I have been privileged to see, celebrate and support some remarkable personal achievements by women ringers.    I see more women creating their own opportunities, and, as importantly, making opportunities for other women.  It all adds up.   

It’s still not enough.  Until we see balanced representation to the point in elite peal bands and national competitions, we aren’t done.  The magic number of no more than 4 women in any peal band remains a remarkably tough barrier, so we aren’t done.   The efforts of individual women aren’t enough to get this done.  It requires institutional commitment as well.   

What can we do?  you might ask.   I’m glad you asked.  Why not use this as an opportunity to schedule a women’s development day – could be anything, a particular method, ringing particular bells, conducting (a good idea on so many levels).  Anything to get those ‘ringing CVs’ in a better position to be able to step into those national competition bands and ring in those elite peals.   

In the meantime, I’ll look forward to celebrating some more amazing personal achievements.  And counting.