Bright Idea (Duck!) (was RE: Re: pennsicdance: Planning Dance at Pennsic )

[Vanessa Layne]

Greg wrote

> In fact, you could have the dance listed as being taught by the
> "Pennsic Dance Cabal" ;-)

Funny you should mention that....

I have been thinking about a bunch of the issues raised here about
process and leadership, and a few issues which haven't been raised.  I
have thought of something which doesn't solve any obvious problems,
but *describes* things pretty well.

Rhetorical question: if you were a 16th century denizen of London (for
example), what would you call a group of people

* who all belonged to the same or closely related crafts 

* who banded together to promote that craft

* who banded together to protect the ancient rights and privileges of
those craftsmen

* who banded together to exert quality control, so the state wouldn't
step in and do it for/to them

* who provided a gateway for induction of young crafts people into the
trade.

?

You'd call it a "guild".

What we seem to be on the edge of -- what I would like to see us go
and do -- is forming a guild, and a guild in a much more period sense
so the word than we normally do in the SCA.

Not a guild of dancers, though.  A guild of Dancemasters (and dance
musicians).

There's two really obvious functions which I think the adopting the
identity and form of a guild would help:

(1) We know, from previous lengthy discussion on sca-dance, that there
are people who would teach, but don't feel confident enough to put
themselves forward.  There had been some discussion of mentoring, but
unless it was informally and privately done, there was no follow-up on
that idea.

I propose that anyone who approaches the guild is considered a
"journeyman" just for saying so -- unless they *want* to be an
apprentice.  If someone says "Oh, I teach dance to my local group, but
I'm to intimidated to teach at Pennsic" we can say "Fine, wanna be an
apprentice?  We'll hook you up with a journeyman or two."  We can as a
guild take collective responsibility that anyone who wants a mentor
can get one.

(2) A guild can have institutional memory, persistence from Pennsic to
Pennsic, and possibly learn from it's mistakes.  And the word "guild"
is far less threatening than "cabal".

(3) I just think petitioning the Lord Mayor of Pennsic for a guild
charter and being the first chartered guild of the City of Pennsic,
and using a period solution to the problem is just unbelievably cool.

Perhaps understanding how a period guild would have deal with, say,
decision making, might provide us some useful food for thought.
According to my very limited sources (the EB) somethings were handled
by votes of all members, but many other were strictly controlled by
officers.  Can anyone point me at a good secondary source on the
topic?

So I guess what I'm suggesting is at the moment nothing more than a
name change.  I'm partial to "The Ancient, Venerable and Aetherial
Guild of Dance Masters and Dance Musicians of the City of Pennsic" or
"the Pennsic Dancemasters' Guild" for short.

-- Tibicen

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