how not to welcome the stranger

[cellio]

The situation I'm writing about occurred in an SCA context, but the principles generalize at least to any "unusual" community.

The SCA is organized around both specific activities and broader social activities. We have general get-togethers like events, but we also have fighting practice, dance practice, choir rehearsals, brewing guild, costuming workshops, archery practice, and so on and so on. Sometimes people are attracted to the SCA as the SCA, and sometimes they come in through a specific activity. Of the latter, some then broaden their interests and become part of the society, and others remain focused on that one activity and (often) drift away because it can be hard to pursue just the one thing. (Eventually you've got to start going to events, which can be a shock if you haven't been prepped.)

Except for fighting, most of the activities that people enter through have non-SCA analogues. My husband, for example, was an experienced folk-dancer and entered the SCA through dance practice. Our choir has had several people over the years who wanted to sing in a choir and renaissance music was fine. We've gotten people who do costuming at SF cons who want to learn about medieval clothing. And so on.

The important thing to remember, when dealing with such a person, is: this person isn't already sold on the SCA. He just wants to fence or dance or make beer or whatever, and if the SCA turns out to be hospitable he'll stick around. But it's not as sure a thing as when, say, someone moves in from another group and is looking up the locals. (Yes, you can blow that too. That's not the focus of this essay.)

I was recently contacted by someone who participates in a particular activity mundanely, had heard we do it, and wanted to be hooked up with someone local to him. I talked with him a little about the activity (how the SCA tends to do it) and about the SCA in general (he already knew what you can know about us without actually meeting us; in fact, he'd even done research on the medieval forms of his activity of interest). The activity has a weekly gathering local to him, so I then sent two pieces of email. The first was a private message to the person in charge of that activity saying (essentially) "yo, I've got an interested mundane for you" with a little more background on what I knew. The second was a message sent to both of them making introductions and asking the SCA person to include the newcomer on his distribution list for activity-specific announcements. In that message I was careful to use no SCA jargon, and I used mundane (not SCA) names.

The SCA person responded and welcomed the newcomer (good). He also said something akin to "practices are at the duke's house" and suggested the newcomer join the local group's mailing list (which is a discussion list, not an announcement list, and covers many topics not related to this activity). He signed his SCA name.

*cringe*

I suspect that wasn't the best way to make a good impression. Was it so bad that the newcomer will punt? No, I doubt it -- but it would have been easy to be more accessible, and seeing this reminded me of just how bad many SCA people are at being accessible. Newcomers who show up at events don't fare much better; we assume they share a context, know what the jargon means, understand the social norms, etc. We've gotten better at arranging for loaner garb and telling them to bring their own dishes, but we still have a way to go to bridge that gap between committed SCA folk and not-sure-about-this curious visitors. Sigh.

I'm not suggesting that we hide what we do. The SCA is about much more than any specific activity; we should not over-compensate for fear of weirding people out. But you can ease them into it and increase the odds that they'll think this is interesting. And small changes can be immensely more welcoming: for instance, when sending out announcements about practices, is it so hard to send it both to the group list and the small set of people who want to be directly notified? Especially if the alternative is to bury the newcomer in discussions of Robin Hood movies, BoD antics, the new rules about children's activities, and the college of arms (to choose just a few)?

I can, of course, take this up with the specific individual involved (who is a good and generally-clueful person). But while one incident prompted this ramble, the issue is much broader. How do we encourage SCA people, as opposed to this SCA person, to put themselves in the shoes of the newcomer before responding to inquiries? Are there lessons we can learn from other "weird" subcultures, like fandom? (Fandom is probably a bad example because it very much organizes around the convention, not the sustained local activity. But there might be sub-fandoms that are different, or other groups.)

Comments

[siderea]

But I've also seen people who turned out to be key contributors who were drawn in through dance practice (for some reason it was always dance practice)

"For some reason?" Unless your local reality is a lot different from mine, the reason is that dance practice is a social gathering, not a specialist gathering. And when such people "join through dance practice" it's not because they were dancers who wanted to learn renaissance dance (take a class!), they were dancers who thought we might be fun people to dance with. Cause I gotta say, most people (mundanely) into dance qua dance don't find anything interesting in the dance at an SCA dance practice: it's taught at too basic a level, and it's not very interesting or challenging forms.

I'm with Justin on this one. Experience taught me that mundane specialists looking for a music group with no interest in the whole package were bad news. In particular, mundane musicians who joined rehearsals, and then went to their first gig at an SCA event often had bad culture shock and didn't return. I developed the policy that I wouldn't admit anyone who hadn't been to at least one local SCA event, and preferably had heard us in performance.

I'd like to agree with you, in that I think most Scadians are terrible in public-facing communications, including communicating with prospectives. But my criticism is that they are unclear or dishonest. You are complaining that they are unattractive (too weird seeming), and not only don't I think that's a problem, I think you goals run directly counter to mine. I think we should be far more upfront about our weirdness and far less apologetic.

My own local group, for instance, has been in decline for some years, so were something like this to happen here, I would want to err on the side of drawing the person in. A group that already has more people and activities than it knows what to do with would choose differently.

Drawing in the wrong people is not actually superior to drawing in no people. It can actually be worse.

Pouring more water in a sack with a hole in it just makes the hole larger.

Trying to make up with volume -- jducoeur, are you listening -- lack of stickiness in your club just makes your club look, to people who might actually be interested members, like second-hand goods. Giving good prospectives lots of examples of other people deciding the club is not for them is a really bad message to send. Clubs, like singles, can come across as unattractively desperate.

[jducoeur]

I developed the policy that I wouldn't admit anyone who hadn't been to at least one local SCA event, and preferably had heard us in performance.

Yaas. That's harder-core than me, but I think the problem has always been more acute on the musical side. There have never *been* many specialists drawn in for the dance, so I've never had to make a point of it -- pushing people into events after-the-fact suffices. But on the music side, I suspect you're much more prone to having people who are specifically seeking out the specialty.

I think we should be far more upfront about our weirdness and far less apologetic.

Just so. The Society is, by and large, too *defensive* about our own weirdness. Folks miss the fact that that defensiveness is the biggest turn-off, more than the weirdness itself.

(This is why the "garb in public" argument always makes me twitch. Too many people conflate it with Freaking the Mundanes, and assume you're simply going to turn folks off. In practice, it's all about body language and tone: if you're open, casual and not defensive/aggressive, people are *far* less bothered by it, and it often turns into a fine smidgeon of publicity.)

Trying to make up with volume -- jducoeur, are you listening -- lack of stickiness in your club just makes your club look, to people who might actually be interested members, like second-hand goods.

Oh, well aware of it, and working on it. As with most such problems, it's systemic, and fixing it is a tricky process: the Barony has fallen prey to some particular pathologies that have hurt us over the years. We're actually not doing *too* badly overall at the moment -- that is, I think we're making progress -- but I'm afraid that the boroughs are, by and large, in deep trouble. That's a tad depressing, but my leverage to fix it is somewhat limited, so I'm doing what I can and broadening my focus a bit. (The grey hair coming into my beard finally drove home that I'm simply too old to be point-man at the borough demos any more. Probably should have backed off ten years ago, but it was a hard realization...)