Recruitment vs high standards
Sep. 28th, 2007 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msmemory_archiveThis 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.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 08:49 pm (UTC)No doubt. And everyone's response will come out of different places in their past - for example, I wished for a long time that someone had given me better advice when I was making my first garb, so that I would have learned that if I made it out of fabric that was a little better it would have lasted longer and I would have spent less money continuing to make stuff that wore out. But then again, I wished that when I was a little older. Sometimes things seem very straightforward when you're 18.