[Ansteorra] My take on past and future of A&S

Jeffrey Clark jmclark85 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 25 18:28:34 PST 2012


Duchess Willow,

I think that documentation is a wonderful thing. I think that the stress
should be on effort, research, and artistic development. We nurse a "sheep
to shawl" mentality in A&S and we might do well to limit our scope in
judging and discussing A&S items: if someone is working on a particular
type of book binding, and they don't necessarily use period materials, but
they are using a period technique... how relevant is the use of the modern
material? In fact, that might be a good point of documentation -- how the
use of modern items affects a period craft...

I think the use of documentation encourages people to learn about how their
craft was done in period and to put it into perspective, I think the focus
on scope might be a better discussion.

--AS Zorzi

On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 4:44 PM, willowdewisp at juno.com <
willowdewisp at juno.com> wrote:

> A&S in Ansteorra back in the Ancient times<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
> "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
> Duchess Willow de Wisp.2012
> The A& S was a lot different 15- years ago. All of us were together to
> improve A&S in the Kingdom and to make learning enjoyable. We understood
> that the SCA was entertainment. We also understood that we needed to
> provide a system:
> ·        That provided the teaching that allow the populace a way to get
> the skills they needed to make the things needed for the SCA,
> ·        Encourage research for the love of research
> ·        Set up activities that increased the populaces understanding of
> the cultures of the time period we are studying
> ·         to provide recognition at all levels.
>
> The leadership in the kingdom viewed the Kingdom as a whole and events as
> the end product. The most important thing A&S was to do was to make the SCA
> better, more fun, more period and in general have Magic.  Competitions were
> used to promote this goal and were not an end all in themselves.
>
> Since the War we have spent a lot of our effort in beating the Trimirians.
> Everything we do is to promote a competition that has five champions and
> our friendly enemies are not happy with. I would think that we should be
> thinking about ways to make learning fun.
>
>  I have talked to many people who did not join the SCA and I discovered
> that they got the impression that you have to everything “right” with
> emphasis on expensive materials. This made the SCA to expensive and to nik
> picking to be fun. If they wanted or could spend a lot of money they could
> do the Ren faires and if they want to be nik picking they could do the
> Civil War or Victorian groups where there are better learning venues.
>
> Many adults who are and have just finished college really do not want to
> take classes and tired to death with writing. In the past 10 years we have
> done little that seems not to stress those two things. I have seen groups
> having competitions that call for non-period items and that is a start,but
> I think we need to think about having our “Period” competitions with less
> stress over documentation.  I would like to see competitions that allow for
> the 3by5 documentation and a lot of “one to one” feedback with the artisan
> and judge. We need A&S that spans the levels of our artisans and craftsmen.
> We need to encourage without competition.
>
> I do not care what it takes to “win” at Gulf War. I was told at the last
> Kingdom A&S that we are not allowed to talk to artisans one to one because
> that would give the artisan too much help and he would not be allowed to
> talk to the judge at Gulf War. I was explaining to the artisan how I judged
> and how the judging form shaped what I was looking at. Do the problems with
> people feeling upset about judges I have sworn an oath to always talk to
> people I judge.
> Tthat aside that way of looking at things is a great change from 15 years
> ago when we chose our Champions and everyone then jumped in and helped them
> learn how to write documentation.
>
> In the past we believed that process of A&S in the SCA followed this
> pattern
> 1.      first thing was that the person learned about a period art or
> Science
> 2.      then they would take that learning and make something
> 3.      then they would improve on how they used the techniques and made
>  that something well a
> 4.      Then the person would write down the research so we could add that
> research into the common knowledge.
> 5.      After they had gathered the knowledge and could show the skill the
> person would go and teach it to someone else.
> It was by that process people would interact and learning would take place
> and people would be happier and the SCA would grow. Because the stress was
> on sharing knowledge not competition new people were looked on as an
> opportunity to teach not a threat.
>
> I gathering ways we promoted learning in the past without classes,
> competition or written documentation. If you have a fun way to learn please
> post it to  me.
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