The Guild master has been in discussion with Branch reps and Secretaries at the Spring General Committee meeting regarding recruitment and retention. Each branch was asked to submit their thoughts – see Anne’s Recruitment thoughts report on behalf of the Bicester Branch – download it below.
This does bring up a big issue really – more and more towers (countrywide, not just locally) are finding it hard to continue ringing and more towers are falling silent due to lack of ringers. Kathryn has sent these thoughts around by email:
It was great to have two new members at our Branch AGM – and youthful ones at that! Most of our towers could do with more ringers – and although it’s sometimes a thankless job recruiting/ teaching/ retaining/ encouraging new ones, without recruits we may, within the next 10-20 years, have a number of ‘silent’ towers. Anne Martin (Launton) and I were at a meeting where this topic was discussed throughout the Oxford Guild and some of the ideas/ difficulties are highlighted in Anne’s report on the Branch website. Do see what you can do individually to encourage newcomers to our quaint but lovely English tradition!
I echo these concerns – the Bicester branch membership is dropping and whilst some is due to people moving away, some is simply because our members are getting older and less able to ring and newer (younger) recruits are not coming forward. Equally I wonder if many towers in our branch have ringers confident or capable of teaching new recruits. If you are from a tower that has possible recruits but hasn’t a competent/capable/willing teachers then please contact Anthony or any of the branch officers and we will help where possible. Equally, if a course on teaching bell handling would be useful then get in touch and we can organise something. Having taught a new band at Caversfield over the last year or so and watching them improve I can vouch for it being a rewarding opportunity to teach new (and younger) recruits and we are now fairly good at plain hunt and are starting to work on plain courses of Grandsire Doubles (with a little extra help from Launton) which after just over one year is very pleasing – we also came second in the branch striking competition last year!