Stickability
As the Guild of Clerical Ringers we are very supportive of the CCCBR initiative Ringing 2030. The project includes importantly a component to ensure that conditions are such that ringing takes place, to quote: ‘in a quality environment… that makes people enjoy ringing and want to stay doing it’. The Guild of Clerical Ringers, as with most ringers, is highly aware that from time to time personal and social tensions can occur within ringing teams or towers, or where there is conflict between church leadership and the tower, that results in dissension and unhappiness. All of which can have possibly a negative impact on the quality of the ringing or worse still, sees ringers leaving the tower, giving up or going elsewhere.
In my early years of ringing, going back now longer than perhaps I care to remember, as a raw recruit from the church choir and an altar server (the often popular and historical sources for ringing recruitment), I remember the marginal tolerance shown by some older ringers towards those of us who as youngsters struggled to learn to ring. Our presence was not altogether unwelcome but the more experienced, representing ‘authority’, would often albeit unintentionally foster an atmosphere of fear amongst us learners that we must not put a foot wrong or fail to achieve the ringing standards demanded. The was quite a challenge for some given that the quality of teaching bell handling was not all it might have been. Yet several of us, not all, struggled on and became reasonably proficient. I would hope that these days any sense of power-based ranking in the tower is not to be tolerated. Recruits, young or older need to learn in an environment which recognises individuality and different learning sets… and thankfully ART, and other valuable programmes, encourage and progress this. Not as a footnote but coming back to why we ring in terms of a calling and linking with the Church and the historical Jesus, the key features presented should be those of kindness, compassion and forgiveness… for all of us to follow. It is certainly, in my book, worth thinking through how these virtues or qualities might permeate our ringing fellowship thus encouraging stickability, confidence and enjoyment for those fresh to the exercise or indeed the more practiced.
Jonathan Rose, Guild of Clerical Ringers