A School of Emergent Priorities teaching case follows a suburban tower after a striking-quality register, not the captain, began assigning the tenor rope.
A single-site teaching case from a suburban change-ringing tower, with no captain override beyond one practice night
The Master of Priority Studies has a new teaching case, and the rope it turns on is no longer the captain’s to give.
Lecturer Iben Chikere, with Senior Lecturer Fenna Okoro, Convenor of the Horizon Register, and Lecturer Lindiwe Achterberg, reconstructs eleven months at one suburban six-bell tower. A paper striking register had logged faults for years while the tenor still sat with the captain. After 12 May 2025 the register assigned the rope. It reassigned the tenor on seven of the eleven practice nights that followed.
Once the register assigns the rope, the captain is taking minutes of a decision that has already been made.
— Iben Chikere, Lecturer
The teaching case is assembled from the register, the captain’s minutes, and interviews with the band. Peal attempts cease after July. The band rings the plain courses the register rewards. A one-night captain override is used once, then minuted as not to be repeated. Dr Okoro said the Horizon Register would now log tenor assignment without a live striking rank as a governance risk. “What is not on a live rank is the thing we are asked to notice.”
The work extends the School’s archive of volunteer offices that outlive the judgement that used to staff them. Affiliated societies are asked to roster their heaviest rope from the live rank, with no captain override sustained beyond a single practice night. The case enters the teaching pack on those terms.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.e221y9.