the Perfectly Period Feast for 1420-1440 Catalonia, 13Nov10

[ppfuf]

Howdy ya'll. 
I just got word that the West Kingdom's Fall Collegium 2010 has been moved to November 13. If you were hoping to attend the class on the Perfectly Period Feast for 1420-1440 Catalonia, please adjust your calendars accordingly.

Sadly that's not the bad news. The bad news is spring collegium for 2010 has been cancelled, so any preperatory classes for servers and carvers will be at the outdoor West Kingdom Arts and Sciences weekend. A&S weekend is currently scheduled for June 11-13th.

GM and I will try to attend any local collegial events between now and feast if there are people in outlying areas who would like to be carvers or servers. I may also attempt to teach the guest and staff feast classes at the cook's playdate at the West-Antir war in July.

eta: for more discussion on the decisions around collegium, please see etaine_pommier's  Collegium? post. (sorry, here's the unlocked version, http://etaine-pommier.livejournal.com/241052.html .)
 

Comments

[etaine-pommier.livejournal.com]

I suspect that part of our issues with attendance stem from the fact that some strong Western households seem to be getting more insular - I see a continuing emphasis on bringing "your" people up to speed, rather than an emphasis on contributing to the kingdom or principality.

Anyone have further ideas about how we can popularize arts stuff at the kingdom and principality level? The trend with current royalty seems to be towards household/invitational activities (arts classes, practices, etc.), rather than activities that are open to all. Public ones are on the wane, private ones on the rise.

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Private classes are not inherently bad, sometimes it's the only way you can make a project (such as GM's shoe-making workshops) work.
My first guess at making art more public is to ...well, make more art public. Stuff like the cook's playdate. I know some arts are hard to do at events, but perhaps we should take over a corner of the eric and do some hand-sewing or leather working, or something. Perhaps at the next coronet we should ask Juana and Ivar if we can have a little sewing circle on their front porch. I'd suggest using The Saint, but people have gotten weird about walking into other people's public areas. I'll give it some more thought.

[etaine-pommier.livejournal.com]

That's entirely true about private classes - my weekend cotehardie workshops are the same way. I didn't mean to imply that they were a bad idea, just that they don't have the same impact on the kingdom when they are by invite only. Hence the need for Collegiums and A&S.

The Saint is dedicated to hosting fighters when it's on the eric for Crowns and Coronets, but we could certainly use it for arts at Coronations - we've done it before :-)

[zoccolaro.livejournal.com]

I know that there are some people who would be willing to do all-day sessions, but I think there needs to also be a mix of very basic classes as well. Looking at the morning classes, they were all very specialized - nothing there for someone who is a beginner to kind of just waltz in and learn. Maybe that's something that needs to change also.

[syele.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think this is a great idea! Though, this does get us back to the concern that I have heard some chatelaines voice in the past 'but I threw a newcomer's class and no newcomers came'...but I do think that an introductory class track could be a very big draw, if done well and, more importantly, advertised well.

just jumping in here...

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

Make sure not to call them "newcomer's" classes in the advertisement / listings. It's off-putting bec. few ppl want to admit they're n00bs. "Introduction to Blackwork" & "Holy Grail 101: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Grail (But Were Afraid to Ask)" are friendlier, welcoming titles for beginner classes.

And then, yeah, some longer, in-depth sessions, which doesn't have to mean super-expert level either. Making a pouch can take 3 hours+ & can include a historical overview w/design & sewing, yet only requires basic stitching skills.

[xrian.livejournal.com]

Do keep the Needleworkers Guild in the loop here, most notably our new Guild Minister the_lbk. She might be interested in co-sponsoring a "stitch and bitch" in a conspicuous spot if we could find a spot. (She's offered her pavilion more than once, but it's not a big sunshade...)

The Needleworkers Guild also has its own pavilion, which is not right on the eric (it's somewhat non-period) and is only present at some Crown events (the owner's got health problems at the moment)... but it's fairly large, and not much used.

[thelbk.livejournal.com]

my intention is to start with a push for local workshops/needle worker's nights.

[roswtr.livejournal.com]

I agree with you 100% -- in fact, I was having *exactly* that conversation with a couple of folks at the gate on Saturday. One idea we came up with is to approach those insular households and ask them to sponsor some tracks at future collegiums. Get their classes our of their own living rooms and backyards and into the mainstream where everybody can benefit from them.

It would also go a long way to see support for collegia from our upper echelons. Royalty have been a rare sight at collegia for the past many years -- we can usually count on seeing the queen or a princess or two, but kings and princes are rare. Lots of people say they support collegia, but that support seems to end with half-hearted encouraging other people to go. Hell, even our bigger arts-focussed households don't often show up at collegia, but they have lots and lots of "private workshops."

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

I think the "approach those insular households and ask them to sponsor some tracks at future collegiums" is a great idea. A few collegiums ago I got a great class from one of Richard de Camville's squires after he pressured them all to teach a class.

[roswtr.livejournal.com]

Yup, and I think for a while it was pretty common for Queen's Guards and Princess' Escorts (or whatever they're called) to be expected to show up, either to teach or take classes or both. It used to be a great venue to check out people on the watch list. But we're not even encouraging our apprentices to show up and teach any more -- it's just too much effort.

This isn't a new problem. When mastersantiago and I were collegium chancellors, we considered ourselves lucky if we got 100 people through the door. Now, a good collegium turnout is about 80, and it's dropping.

Like anything else we do, collegium needs a good mix to draw a good crowd. A wide variety of classes, some lecture and some hands-on. A mix of beginner, intermediate and advanced level classes. It needs to be talked up a lot. (bonacorsi had a great idea when she used the privy press to advertise collegium a couple of years ago -- she'd put a tag line for a single class on each ad, with the little tear-off strips at the bottom with the collegium url on them.)

It needs visible support, from all of us, not just whining about how far away it is, or how there's nothing interesting going on there, or how tired we are from going to Crown and Coronet.

[syele.livejournal.com]

(I got *so* much flack for making my guard do a class....I'm a tyrant)

[roswtr.livejournal.com]

Big meanie.

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

really? from the guards themselves or from other people? Either way that's too bad. I went to the panel discussion at spring collegium and found it very interesting.

[syele.livejournal.com]

From other people, primarily.

Set phasers to "ignore".

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Seriously, when you are princess again (or queen) make your guard do another class. The last class was good, and as an added bonus it helped me put names to the faces of some of the young fighters. It's good for them, because when those guards grow up and are royalty themselves, they'll need the experience of speaking in public.