A& S round table

[yvonne_rogers]

I'm currently feeling rather pleased with myself and want to share. I facilitated a round table discussion on the topic of A& S Competitions in Ealdormere, at this evening's Eoforwic meeting

Comments

[_medb_]

Interesting format, but I doubt that having beginners judge advanced entries would work, and this is in addition to the very likely bias of some people who'd refuse to have a 'non-expert' judge their stuff; they are out there, sigh- I personally like it when someone takes a fresh approach to looking at stuff, so newbies are great in my opinion. I could also go into the topic that it's hard enough to convince beginners that their items are 'good enough' to show, much less try to judge an advanced work. (that's a self esteem issue, which I've never had for A&S, but many people, even experienced SCAdians, have)
I often get a crapload of stupid questions/comments from people who do know about the items I've entered and if the 'experts' can't get past particular misconceptions, I'm not sure if beginners would either.
For example, how would you handle people who say things like, 'they didn't make X', when they've just finished praising another SCAdian who's done research on X and shown that X was done well before the period of the item in question? Or, saying it's too bad I couldn't have provided the original recipe rather than a translation into English, when I've done an item that came from a 16th century ENGLISH cookbook?
There's also the issue that very few people even bother to look at documentation, even if it's only a page or two long (I do read the novels, but I understand that not everyone's going to want to do that)?
(I'm not being argumentative- I'm quite curious as to how you'd handle such things since the topic of judging has been discussed in various forums lately)

[cortejo]

I think there has to be the communication exchange. The person exhibiting opens the dialogue with the art work and the documentation. The judge starts there. If the documentation isn't being read... why bother judging?

[_medb_]

Oh I definitely agree- communication exchanges are MUCH better (and a heck of a lot more fun!). The trick is getting that communication to happen- half the time the entrants aren't near their stuff (and I'm bad with names to faces), and I can't count how many times I've heard even accomplished artisans say they won't judge because they don't feel they know enough/haven't been invited to judge/possibly feel intimidated in judging those with higher awards than they do. (and that's just some of the issues on the judging side, sigh) I'm hoping the recent discussions both at the Eoforwic meeting and ones that the new A&S Minister has been starting do come to help fix a few of these issues. I've been pretty lucky, so I'm going on comments I've heard over the years from others in terms of fears of judging/entering- I'm confident enough in my own skills to not care how many 'cookies' an entrant has (mundane degrees in related subjects), but my laurel is very active in trying to encourage both judging and promoting A&S as much as possible.

[cortejo]

I guess you have to think of what the judging outcomes are.

Are you sizing up someone for an award? Really wanting to learn about this neat thing? Education someone on how to do something better? Win a prize like a tournament?

If you know what the point was...then it would be easier to judge I think.

[_medb_]

Good point. I personally try to judge based on the middle two (and keep an eye out for potential award nominations, but it's not my major focus), but not everyone does that.