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Ringing Trends Committee
Introduction
At the 2004 Council meeting in Colchester a motion was made on behalf of the Administrative Committee to set up a new committee of Council to be called the Ringing Trends Committee. The motion was carried by 165 votes to 36.
It was further agreed that a Working Party be established to refine the brief terms of reference proposed, to clarify the approach of the new committee to its work and to report its recommendations to the 2005 Council meeting at which the members of the committee itself will be elected.
The following members were appointed: Frank Beech, Andrew Howes, Jason Hughes and Beryl Norris. Beryl (, Tel: (01252) 651293) later agreed to lead the Working Party.
Background
Motivated by a desire for the Central Council to develop an effective strategy to respond to negative trends in ringing, a Trends Working Group was established by the 2000 Central Council meeting. In 2002 it published the report Trends in Ringing with twelve recommendations, the first being:
That the Administrative Committee construct the framework under which an historical record of the 'state of ringing' may be developed.
More recently, in March 2004, the Towers and Belfries Committee published a spreadsheet showing a year to year comparison of ringable and unringable towers at the end of 2002 and 2003 (with thanks to Dr John Baldwin for data from the online version of Dove's guide). Later this spreadsheet was extended to include data for 2005.
Rationale for a new committee
The Trends Working Group found that, although there is a great deal of data that might indicate trends, it is neither comprehensive nor organised. Consequently the group used some limited surveying and joining of disparate data to identify trends. However, most of the twelve recommendations required further substantiation of the data from which the trends were derived.
It is clear from experience of previous surveys and of the Trends Working Group that there is sufficient work to justify the establishment of a permanent committee.
A permanent committee, as opposed to periodic working groups, would provide consistency in data collection and analysis which could assist the Council and the ringing associations to be more effective.
Subsidiary benefits would include an improved ability to respond to requests for funding, and a more detailed and accurate record for future historians to draw upon.
Proposed terms of reference
To identify, evaluate and record trends in church bell ringing for the purposes of guiding Council policy.
Potential mode of operation of the committee
The committee would establish, execute and publish a regular and consistent survey (or census) which would provide a long-term and sustainable view of trends in ringing, possibly linked to the national census. This would be the fundamental deliverable from this committee.
The committee would encourage consistent reporting of key statistical data in association annual reports from which annual statistics for ringing at large may be derived. This might cover aspects such as the numbers and distribution of ringers, the age profile of the ringing population, the number and distribution of active towers, etc.
The committee would facilitate the compilation of, and access to, data available from other sources and would provide other information, as resources allowed, to expand upon the regular survey and to answer ad hoc questions.
Although the scope of the committee's remit is to provide information as required by the Council, it is expected that it will also be able to provide some level of service to the ringing community at large.
Committee's report to Council 2007
It was agreed at the committee meeting held at the beginning of 2006 that a pilot scheme should be used to test the main questionnaire. Questionnaires were sent out early in the year and returned over a few months! At the committee meeting in September the questionnaire was refined to reflect the comments made. Although there were one or two towers that felt that such questions as asking the ages of ringers in ten year age bands and how old ringers were when they learnt to ring were intrusive, in general the comments were positive and some very useful feedback was obtained.
Since then the questionnaires have been analysed and the results are proving to be very interesting. In particular, the results from part of Surrey show that only 13% of ringers fall into the 20 to 40 age group and 75% of ringers are over the age of 40. Compare this to the sample survey carried out 20 years ago when 50% of ringers were under 40 and 50% over 40.
The analysis of occupations shows that by far the largest proportion of ringers say that they are retired, of those in paid work the largest element work in science or engineering. The attached graphs illustrate some of these initial findings.
A phased programme is planned. There are four phases and it is planned to complete the fourth phase by the end of 2008 with the intention of presenting a completed report in 2009. During this period it will also be decided whether any further data collection is necessary.
Where possible we are matching Associations with counties and Phase 1 questionnaires are being sent to Wiltshire and Dorset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Durham, Tyne and Wear and Northumbria, Ireland, Kent, Northamptonshire and the West Midlands. Associations are being asked to help by providing a coordinator to assist with the data collection and inputting it into an Excel spreadsheet. Phase 2 is planned to start in June 2007 with Phase 3 following later in the year.
Two members of the committee have subsequently decided to stand down because of other pressures so we will be looking for two new members for the committee at the Council meeting in May.
Beryl Norris (Chairman), Phil Gay, Alison Hodge, Andrew Howes, Jon Waters
Current members of the committee
The original five members of the committee, elected at the meeting at Harrogate in 2005, were Beryl Norris (Chairman), Phil Gay, Alison Hodge, Andrew Howes and Jon Waters. Three of these members (Phil, Andrew and Jon) stood down in 2007. There were no nominations at Cheltenham, but Stephen Elwell-Sutton and Mike Till were co-opted. Two later co-options were Jennie Holden and Frank Lewis.