Recruitment vs high standards

[msmemory_archive]

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.

Comments

[richenza.livejournal.com]

I hear you, particularly with regard to not playing at the level that some in the Barony do. There are things I enjoy doing to a period level and things I don't. And I definitely sometimes feel censure for not going the whole hog.

One notable incident was when I was demonstrating sugar paste techniques, and someone called me out for using sugar paste mix from a bag (rather then making it from scratch with gum tragacanth and powdered sugar). Sure, it wasn't exactly period, and I totally have the ability to make sugar paste at that higher level. I've done it before. However, it adds so much hassle to the process that I feel like the "fun" part of making sugar sculptures is diminished by the "obligatory, period" part. So I choose not to.

I guess, in some ways that may be why I don't play very much anyomre. I kind of hit the ceiling on "improving accuracy". (My first garb was calico cotton, FYI.) It isn't that I couldn't do things in yet more period ways, it's that I hit the turning point where pushing the envelope even further isn't fun anymore.

[marysdress.livejournal.com]

"It isn't that I couldn't do things in yet more period ways, it's that I hit the turning point where pushing the envelope even further isn't fun anymore."

*nods* *nods* *nods*

Yup - I can relate to that comment.