msmemory_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
msmemory_archive) wrote2007-09-28 03:44 pm
msmemory_archive) wrote2007-09-28 03:44 pm
Recruitment vs high standards
This is a half-developed notion. I have this theory percolating around my brain that the SCA's recent higher standards in many areas are in fact a barrier to recruiting new members.
Thinking back, when I joined the SCA, it was very much a do-it-yourself group. Nobody minded if you made a polyester velour tunic, or made a surcoat out of brocade curtains from a yard sale. We all politely ignored the pickle bucket armor, webbing folding chairs, and nylon tents, instead collectively imagining ourselves lords and ladies in samite and fur, living in bright pavilions, sitting on thrones. College students, young adults, and the poor could feel welcome, for their fantasy was just as good as anyone else's.
These days, all the trappings are available to anyone with enough money. You want turnshoes, sheepskin bedding, snowy linen robes, shiny armour? Just plunk down enough dollars and Poof! instant status. That random 19-year-old scholarship student, who would have been a shabby but respected herald in 1982? Well, now he's just shabby.
We've recreated class differences, and based them on modern incomes. No wonder we aren't bringing in or retaining the peripheral, young, or poor members who historically have been the SCA's lifeblood.
ETA: I'm not claiming innocence here either: I am at least as guilty as most of spending my "look! no kids!" income on finery while that early garb molders in the attic.
Thinking back, when I joined the SCA, it was very much a do-it-yourself group. Nobody minded if you made a polyester velour tunic, or made a surcoat out of brocade curtains from a yard sale. We all politely ignored the pickle bucket armor, webbing folding chairs, and nylon tents, instead collectively imagining ourselves lords and ladies in samite and fur, living in bright pavilions, sitting on thrones. College students, young adults, and the poor could feel welcome, for their fantasy was just as good as anyone else's.
These days, all the trappings are available to anyone with enough money. You want turnshoes, sheepskin bedding, snowy linen robes, shiny armour? Just plunk down enough dollars and Poof! instant status. That random 19-year-old scholarship student, who would have been a shabby but respected herald in 1982? Well, now he's just shabby.
We've recreated class differences, and based them on modern incomes. No wonder we aren't bringing in or retaining the peripheral, young, or poor members who historically have been the SCA's lifeblood.
ETA: I'm not claiming innocence here either: I am at least as guilty as most of spending my "look! no kids!" income on finery while that early garb molders in the attic.
Firehose on!
I don’t know what the membership numbers really are; maybe we are facing a real and significant decline in numbers, but I don’t see it. (The fact I’ll now elaborate on what I do see instead doesn’t mean my mind is closed on the question, just that in this venue all we can do is weigh anecdotal impressions against each other.) I see a decline in participation. People do hear about the SCA through lots of different channels – some of them demos, many through media coverage or word-of-Web or whatever. And they’re happy to join - I can’t tell you how many e-mail contacts I got when I was seneschal of the Towers to the effect that “I’ve heard about the SCA and I think it’s the coolest thing and I sent in my membership money to California and they say you’re my local group. So what do you do?” I’m not saying it’s a huge number, maybe a dozen or so over a couple of years, but it’s the kind of first contact I never remember having over five years as baronial seneschal, a generation ago.
The point is, people can hear about us and find us, but then what do they do with us, and we with them? In my case in Towers, I found all too often they expected to be entertained: when they asked “what do you do?” and I explained about canton project days, and more activities in Boston like dance practice and various guilds, and six to nine events per year, they mostly wanted to know when was the next show – oh that’s right, “event” – because they can hardly wait to watch. There wasn’t as much interest in doing things as in attending events.
And when I hear about other groups that are having trouble getting people involved, it’s mostly the same sort of thing: they have large numbers of members, the problem is getting officers or a critical mass of musicians or autocrats. (I think there was someone from the Phoenix AZ group bringing this up on [Bad username or site: ”sca” @ livejournal.com] recently.) And why is this?
Some of it may well be a sea-change in the mass culture, as plenty of others suggest here. Some of it, I’ve felt for a while, is simply that our large groups have too many members. In a smaller group, everybody does everything, because they have to or it doesn’t happen. But in a larger group we can specialize: we have the Waytes, and the Quire, and the Mummers, and the fighters, and the officers, and the People Who Stand Up in Court (barons, heralds, champions),…and an increasing sector of the population that sit and watch and listen to them, and don’t do anything. And eventually get bored and go off looking for the next show.
This is getting too long; I’ll choke the comment buffer. It’s not a recruitment crisis, it’s a participation crisis. And over-centralized control by the Corporation. And as for the concept of buying spiffiness, obviously I’ve done a little of it over the years but just as obviously, not very much; I’m intrigued, surprised, and disappointed to hear that people have been able to buy status through spiff.
Re: Firehose on!
Re: Firehose on!