Practice style

At November’s meeting I agreed to write something about the discussion on different styles of practice.

The custom of holding ‘ringing meetings’ at different towers was established in the 1880s to ‘encourage mutual support between the ringers throughout the Deanery’, and that rationale still holds. We encourage members from different towers to attend practices where they can ring on different bells and to get to know ringers from other towers. It can give them opportunities to ring things they might not otherwise be able to, and ideally the opportunity to hear and take part in some well struck ringing.

That ideal was easier to achieve 40 years ago when we had three hour practices, often attended by around 30 ringers, which made it easier to offer something for everyone, with plenty of support.

Now numbers are fewer and practices are shorter, so it’s harder for the ringing master to give everyone what they want – especially anything out of the ordinary – because it’s so dependent on who happens to be there.

The meeting discussed the desire for more practices to have a particular focus. By knowing in advance what to expect, anyone needing to prepare could do so, confident that the effort wouldn’t be wasted.

Focused practices aren’t new. The elementary practices introduced a few years ago focus on the needs of ringers at an early stages of development, and Surprise Major practices cater for advanced ringers in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a general practice. (The single topic courses we run are also focused but they aren’t regular.)

Focused practices must be good for those who attend because they attract similar numbers to general practices despite having much smaller target audiences. But the ones we’ve run so far don’t cover everyone’s needs. The best we offer a lot of our members are the traditional where we ring whatever we can depending on who turns up. They aren’t focused on someone else’s needs, but the statistics show that the majority of our members don’t consider them worth attending, so thy are less likely to feel part of the Branch community.

The challenge is to run practices (or other events) that will attract more of our members, and the way we discussed trying to do that was to provide a range of focused practices (because they seem more effective) but to focus them on the needs of more members.

The obvious gap in what we currently offer is between ‘beginner’ and ‘advanced’. It’s not an easy gap to fill because ‘intermediate’ ringers vary quite a lot in their needs. There’s also a practical constraint – a practice too narrowly focused might not appeal to enough to make it viable, so there needs to be a balance.

However we do it, any form of focused practice will require more planning – not just to provide the appropriate ‘diet’ but to ensure enough of the right people will be there benefit. That can prove to be more difficult than actually running the practice. As well as knowing in advance who is coming (like we do already with some practices) it may need careful choices of day/time to avoid clashes for participants with other events. If you have any ideas for how we can make practices meet the needs of more of our members, particularly ‘intermediate’ practices, then please contact Nigel at: brm@sdb.odg.org.uk

If we can provide something for all our members by putting more emphasis on focused practices, should they replace the traditional unfocused ‘anyone turns up’ practices? That will depend on whether members continue to support them when there are alternatives. If they don’t then it the effort could go into practices that are better supported. Of course there will always be some events where anyone can turn up and ring, for example before before or after the AGM or other meetings.

John Harrison (January 2022)