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

[jducoeur]

Perhaps I am projecting too much of my concern about my local group onto the broader organization.

No, it's a fair concern: my take on it is that recruitment is off Society-wide. Certainly, I'm quite worried about it locally. There are a lot of reasons for that, both intrinsic and extrinsic -- mistakes the SCA has made, as well as general cultural shifts.

But I don't really agree with the prescription. Drawing in more people, if they're not people who are actually going to *enjoy* the club, simply dilutes it. I push recruitment harder than anybody, but more is not always better.

IMO, one of the biggest problems the Society has is aging, but it's a subtle problem. I mean, people simply being older isn't *not* necessarily a crisis: we have a bunch of older members (some in their 70s) who are still active and vital. No, the problem is burnout and dissipation.

The SCA, by its nature as a very romantic organization, requires passion as its main fuel. When people are fired-up and passionate, it can be downright magical. By contrast, when too many people are self-absorbed or burned-out, it feels quite flat. Fomenting and fostering that passion is, therefore, one of the most critical parts of recruiting.

AFAIK, I have yet to meet anyone who was a *true* specialist who had that passion for the game or ever developed it. There are some borderline cases, to be sure -- people who superficially looked like specialists but weren't, who were attracted in through one field and broadened. But in all the cases I can think of, they were at least quite *tolerant* of the weirdness from the beginning, even if they were too shy to openly embrace it at first.

Hence the utility of at least a *little* bit of open weirdness. Frankly, if someone is going to be so turned off by the use of SCA names in public that it prevents them from checking us out, odds are that they're not ever going to become serious and passionate: they're never going to broaden out of their field to the point where they become useful and productive members of the Society.

Or to summarize the point with one of my usual practical recruiting tips: when a college group is trying to recruit on campus, I do *not* encourage them to try to bring in 100 new members. (We actually had that happen once; it was a disaster.) Rather, I encourage them to find the *right* 5-10 new members: the people who want and need the SCA. That's the way you foster a group to be passionate, and a passionate branch is, almost by definition, a healthy one...