Us and Them (2a)

In the last Newsletter, I discussed the relationship between ringers and non-ringers, and cautioned against seeing it only in narrow terms of recruitment. I argued the merits of informing the communities around us about ringing, regardless of the need to recruit. In this article I will discuss some of the ways that ringers can develop their relationship with non-ringers. There are many opportunities to communicate with them, if you can recognise them and exploit them.   

Your Parish Magazine is an easy target, which has a regular, interested readership. Editors are always keen to include articles from groups within the parish. There are lots of things you can write about, including quarter peals (especially if the dedication is church-related), outings (add some anecdotes, as well as where you went), life events of ringers (births, marriages, deaths, farewells & arrivals) AGM reports (new officers, notable events, significant discussion), spring-cleaning the tower, social events and fund raising or charity activities. Often on the back of reporting an event, you can explain things about ringing as well, for example what a peal is and why ringing one is an achievement, how striking competitions work, how it is possible to ‘lose’ a peal or quarter, how big bells are, how old they are, the existence of the wider ringing community, and so on.

Looking outside the parish, there’s your local newspaper. It will be more choosy than a Parish Magazine, but providing there is a good story to be made out of your news, and ideally a picture to include, then ringing is as good a topic as anything else. It helps to make yourself known to the ‘local news’ reporter for your area, so you can find out what they need. and discuss the sort of stories that you might be able to provide.

Direct interaction with non-ringers needs a bit more targeting. One way is to seek out all the groups in your area and contact them. You might be surprised how many groups there are. When we did this some years ago in Wokingham, we found over twenty identifiable groups in the town, plus another dozen within the church. Not all of them responded to our invitation, but some other groups heard about us and contacted us. As a result we have directly interacted with around 2300 people in 40 different groups over a period of six years. They included scouts/guides/cubs/brownies, Rotarians, history societies, women's groups, retirement associations, members of other churches, U3A (University of the 3rd Age) groups, and primary schools (which accounted for half of our total number of people). You can invite people to you (to see the tower and bells) or you can go to them (and give a talk). We do both.

The way you organise tower visits will depend very much on the nature of your tower. We are very lucky, with stairs giving good access to all levels including the roof, which has superb views. We also have a walkway in the bell chamber, and we have an interesting clock room. You might be less fortunate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. Even if access to the bell chamber is difficult, you can show a bell being rung, and use a model bell to explain what is happening upstairs. Better still, if you can put a video camera upstairs, you can show what the bell is doing on a screen in the ringing room. If you do take visitors upstairs, you need to plan and manage it properly to ensure their safety. Tower visits need several of you as hosts, and it can help if you share the load around your ringers. They won’t all have everything in their heads, so it is worth preparing some notes of interesting features in different parts of the tower, for them to use as a prompt. You can see All Saints Wokingham tower visit notes at: http://allsaintswokinghambells.org.uk/docs/VisitNotes.pdf  

In the next article , I will talk about giving talks to groups of non-ringers, with some thoughts about the type of message we would like to put over.

Article originally printed in the Summer 2010 Sonning Deanery Branch Newsletter, 

  John Harrison, May 2010

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