[Ponte Alto] Recruitment

[Ynes Garcia]

Good afternoon,

I think there are a lot of opportunities for recruitment and retention 
in A&S, particularly since a lot of the materials and tools are either 
cheaper or easier to share.

A group I belonged to that mostly met in a college dorm/dining hall in 
central New York didn't have a site for a summer dance practice, so we 
started dancing under a pavilion in the downtown shopping district.  
People stopped to watch and the instructors would invite them to 
participate.  After a few weeks of being in the same place at the same 
time some musicians started stopping by to play a few songs.  We didn't 
swell our numbers by a lot with this, but the people who came back again 
at all over the summer kept coming back.  I don't know if there's much 
dancing in Ponte Alto, but perhaps there are other arts we can do in 
public and invite people to join us in.

That same group recruited some dog owners by participating in a charity 
dog walk in garb and talking about the history of dogs as workers and 
pets to the folks who asked about the funny clothes.  They were mostly 
interested in the fledgling hound activities, but that's OK, we can use 
more of that, too.

Since every time I knit on my SCA projects in public people are always 
asking me questions, I wonder if teaching some craft classes might not 
be a good way to recruit.  Things that are familiar in a modern context, 
but have a long history.  Knitting, beading, wood carving come to mind 
as some relatively portable examples, and I'm sure there are a lot 
more.  Advertise it primarily as the craft activity rather than as the 
SCA because the craft's name is much more familiar than our group's.

And when people want to move from loaner craft materials to their own, 
the cost of getting started is often much less expensive than with 
fighting.  While I've spent more money on fiber arts than I did on my 
fencing gear and my heavy gear since I joined the SCA , I don't think 
I've spent more than $35 on any single piece of fiber gear I use in the 
SCA, while my rapier mask and my heavy helm were each more than $100.

If someone is willing to help with advertising and coordinating, I'd be 
happy to teach knitting  classes to members of the Barony and the 
general public once a month during Sunday fight practices after my 
academic class ends on May 14.  Even if we don't decide to actively 
recruit this way, I will be bringing my string crafts with me to fighter 
practices this summer and encourage other fiber artists to do the same.  
If we can use a camp stove at the park, I would like to demonstrate silk 
reeling some day when the air is still. 

While the martial arts are the SCA's most visible aspect, I think there 
is a lot of opportunity for expanding our ranks through the gentler 
arts.  If other people are interested, I'd be very happy to work with 
the chatelaine (to make sure I don't break any rules) to coordinate some 
craft-based recruiting efforts over the summer and if successful (either 
with recruiting or because it's fun to do) into the next year, perhaps 
we can talk at fight practice on May 20th or after the next Barony meeting.

- Ynes

Ynes Garcia
ynes at sskip.net