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The Foundation operated between 2007 and 2015. Its objective was: ‘To support the development of the skills, practice and art of change ringing on tower bells and handbells through enhanced public awareness of all aspects of bells and bell ringing and the training of ringers’. It was intended to encourage ‘people,projects’ (as opposed to capital equipment projects) that could either not be done without funding or where addition of financial support could enable them to be done better, faster or on a greater scale than would be possible otherwise.
The Foundation’s story began with two ringers criticising the Central Council (and ringers in general) for spending solely on bells rather than ‘people projects’. They challenged the Council to do better and backed their challenge by an offer to ‘pay the first year’s salary of ‘a person to act professionally in the interests of the future of ringing’. I was asked to chair the group set up to respond to the challenge, and I saw its thinking at first hand.
There would be no point employing anyone (and the donors would be unlikely to pay the money) without a clear view of what he or she would do, and how the work could continue beyond the first year. So the group spent a lot of time exploring both useful things on which money could potentially be spent to benefit ringing (grants for projects, prizes or other initiatives) and how money could be raised in the longer term, notably from external sources.
The idea to form the Foundation emerged from those discussions, and was modelled on similar bodies for other sports and pastimes. As a charity it would be able act as intermediary between funding bodies (which typically think in millions of pounds) and a large number of projects, each of which would cost hundreds or thousands. Because the legal aspects of setting it up would take time, the group decided to do that first.
The Foundation found fund raising difficult because to attract funds you need a track record of spending money on good projects, and there was no track record within ringing of spending on people projects, only on hardware. Ringers were also slow to come forward with ideas they would like to be supported, no doubt because making do with everything done on a shoe string had become ingrained. That culture, and the constraints that it imposes on what can be done within ringing, was of course part of the problem the Foundation was intended to address.
The Foundation’s most notable achievement was to stimulate the formation of the Association of Ringing Teachers (ART) and then to support it financially for several years until it became self sufficient.
From its inception the Foundation faced resistance from parts of the ringing community, and it was eventually wound up at a hostile AGM in 2015. Shortly before that meeting it published a Narrative for Change, setting out a way forward for ringing. Its contents are still relevant since many of the problems the Foundation was set up to help address are still with us. The way the Foundation was conceived and came into being is also of historical interest, so I have made available several key unpublished documents below, along with a link to one that was published.
John Harrison – September 2025
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