[MR] event fees

[David Wendelken]

I think that SCA event prices are dirt cheap.

That's right.  Dirt cheap.

$15 for an entire day's fun?  

$30 for an entire weekend's fun?

That's dirt cheap!

That's a whopping $1 an hour for daytripping, less than that for a weekend
with a great meal thrown in!  You can't get much cheaper than $1 an hour.

I checked online.  It's not uncommon to charge $100 to $200 a day for a
kid's summer camp.  That's $200 to $400 for two days compared to $30.

Not only are events cheap, but so are the arts activities.  It's very common
for a very skilled instructor to teach people how to do their craft for
free.
And I mean free.  Free training, free tools, free materials, even free food
and crash space!

Compare that with learning a craft "in the real world".  It costs $200 to
$400 for a day long jewelry workshop.  An SCA artisan would usually teach me
for free.
And quite a few SCA artists will let you use freely use their tools and
their workspace over the long term if you show a real interest in their
craft.  Try getting that for free somewhere else.  It can and does happen,
but not routinely like it does in the SCA.

I don't think the SCA has to apologize for its prices at all.  Period.

Fu'il and I, and our two kids, used to be dirt poor.  The kind of poor where
maybe you have rent money for your slumlord's cheap apartment and maybe you
don't.  The kind of poor where, when a goober cop arrests you for driving on
a driver's license that the computer says was suspended 46 years before you
were born, you stay in jail until a friend with money bails you out 'cause
you'll never afford it on your own.  

We didn't complain about SCA event prices, we just didn't go to events very
often until we got our finances in order.  It took years of 14+ hour, 6-7
day workweeks to make that happen, but we did it.  We also hosted weekend
SCA craft workshop parties where people would come to our home, bring food,
tools and materials, and have a blast together.  It was cheap and loads of
fun.   

If someone can't afford a weekend's worth of fun for the little amount of
money the SCA charges, they need to either get a better paying job, learn to
spend less on something else, or do without.

If they can't GET a better paying job, they need to focus on getting the
skills and connections so that they can - and worry about hobbies
afterwards.  There's lots of help about budgeting available on line.  Ditto
on jobs, job searching skills, and good paying careers.  Community colleges
and community technical colleges offer affordable training, they don't
require huge student loans, and they are experts at stretching financial aid
dollars.  


Andras Salamandra