Hi everyone,
I’m having some minor delivery issues. I’ll be able to work on this again tomorrow. (I have to take care of my parenting trick-or-treat duties this afternoon and evening!)
Thanks for your patience. Please hold off on conversations to the lists for now.
Seth
Hello organizers,
At long last, Shared Weight is getting ready to move to a new email host. I will be working to transition the four @sharedweight.net lists to the new host in the next week or so. I’m sure there will be some hiccups during the transition, so please hang in there with me. On the day of the move, I will send an email saying that the move is in progress. (Any emails you send during the transition may not get in to the archives.)
Ideally, you won’t even notice the change.
This is just a heads up to let you know it’s coming.
Seth
PS - For those that care about the details, I’ve built up a Linode VM running Debian Stretch and Mailman3. Outbound list traffic will go through AWS since they tend to have a good spam reputation.
Announcing that two brand new resources that could be really helpful to organizers of music and dance camps, festivals and events are in the first week of their development.
womenfolk spreadsheet
The first actually started in 2015 when I compiled a small set of information on instructor gender balance at camps. All wanted to see was the ratio of men to women instructors and musicians at a range of camps. I plopped them into a simple spreadsheet and exported the results (see image below.) My initial sample yielded results from good to abysmal, but only included one year for each even, so didn’t account for any anomalies Responses from people I showed it to were decidedly lukewarm, so I put it away for a couple of years. But this week another idea was put out that dovetailed nicely with my little spreadsheet, so I hauled it out of the mothballs and made it available online.
As it works now, I and a volunteer or two search out info from websites and put it in manually. However my current thinking is that it would be amazing if organizations would self-audit and either send me the results or add them directly to the spreadsheets. I just got my first self-entered stats from Crispin at CDSS (Thank you!) and would love to get more. While it’s easy to think of this as shaming to get organizations to do better, I would rather it was used to as a tool to see how organizations are doing better over time, or to tap the organizations who are doing well for more information on how they get such great results. It could also open up a larger conversation on why hiring for gender equality may not always be the ultimate goal and the other kinds of hiring considerations people are juggling.
A couple of things to know:
For now I’m not collecting information on ethnicity for this sheet.
If gender identity is unknown we list total staff members and only categorize the ones that are clearly one gender or the other as they choose to identify. Any time we aren’t sure, or a staff member has clearly indicated they don’t want to be counted, we leave them out of the category counts. That means we won’t always add up to 100%, but that also gives us important information about how gender identity could be influencing (or not influencing) hiring practices. I want to keep it simple without leaving anyone out!
We are not including unpaid staff or “service staff” (like child care providers, cooks etc.). We really want to get a sense of the way different camps and weekends think about hiring music and dance instructors and performers specifically.
The current document is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MjDRL3ZkHfJAsyk1p-QFTPiqVsFtiqZKEMx…
I left the 2015/16 info attached to it so you can see what results I came up with then.
If you want to enter your info, shoot me an email and I will add you in. ssgowan(a)gmail.com
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The second even more super-exciting resource is being spearheaded by A’yen Tran from Brooklyn.
Women/Black/Indigenous/non-white/LGBTQIA Music Instructor Nominee Directory
A form to nominate excellent banjo, fiddle, guitar, bass, mandolin, uke, vocal, music history and other musical teachers. This form aims to collect nominees who can be referred as music teachers with the goal of increasing representation for women, people of color and gender diversity in music camps and other musical learning opportunities. This form was created on Oct 8, 2019 by A'yen Tran with the intention of making it publicly available, particularly to music camp directors. Please feel free to self-nominate!
This will be an incredible resource for organizers to find underrepresented performers and teachers and will also be a great way for organizers to share the wealth around. Whether you know instructors who should be on this list, or want to hire more underrepresented teachers, I encourage you to take a look at both this one and the womenfolk spreadsheet and participate, if you can.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMhZzZpzfbMkTVqSUHyFJ5YgOxxI6-EH8… <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMhZzZpzfbMkTVqSUHyFJ5YgOxxI6-EH8…>
Thanks,
Sarah Gowan
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I've just become the co-organizer of a dance weekend. Can anyone give
me tips on publicizing the weekend? We'll obviously bring flyers to
nearby dances and dance weekends, but what else should we do?
Thanks!
Larry
Hello all,
Changing the subject line to reflect the topic
of discussion.
Thank you, and please think and contribute if
you can. This could be a game changer.
Kind regards,
Paul
If people want to revisit the use of words,
please reflect that on a different thread.
Sorry - I did not mean to hijack this thread with discussion of gypsies - just found it curious that the term 'dance gypsy' was used in the subject line. I have not heard of anyone addressing that usage. Please return to the original discussion
Mac
On Monday, October 7, 2019, 02:46:21 PM CDT, Masha Goodman Crawford <mashagoodman(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Becky - Excellent answer.
The first time I heard the term "gypsy" for the dance move, I happened to be living among Roma in Europe and was back in the states on a short visit.The part that seemed particularly offensive to me was that the move was taught with the emphasis on gazing flirtatiously into the other dancer's eyes - something that would have been absolutely taboo among the people I had been travelling with. I suppose the name came from someone's mental image of a Flamenco dancer circling, and some idea that Gypsy = Flamenco? who knows. I discovered, much to my dismay, that many of my well-educated American friends thought "Gypsies" were just a fictional group or general term for folks who travel, hence the "dance gypsy" slang. They are a proud and very real ethnic group with a centuries-old language, customs, and a long history of being marginalized and persecuted.In your mind, take any other group with a similar history, and substitute it: Would you teach dancers to do a "Xxx", and tell them that it means to behave a certain way with strangers? (Becky gave one good example, I can think of others as well.)Can we just DROP the term "gypsy" altogether, please?- Masha(dancing and calling since 1978)
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Hi Shared Weight organizers,
A quick email about CDSS resources for organizers!
The Fall 2019 issue of Shop Talk marks the first anniversary of CDSS's free
e-newsletter for organizers of traditional dance, music, and song.
The issue includes highlights from this past year. Check it out here:
https://conta.cc/357h9yI
You can check out past Shop Talk issues and sign up to receive future
issues (FREE) here:
https://www.cdss.org/resources/how-to/organizers#shop-talk
Also in 2018, we launched an Organizers Resource Portal which contains as
many of the best resources for organizers as we could find. You can check
out the portal here: https://www.cdss.org/resources/how-to/organizers
We’re currently working on expanding the portal to include resources for
callers, dance musicians, song leaders, and more. We’ll be announcing the
launch of those resources through Shop Talk sometime later this fall or
early winter.
Feel free to pass this information onto other organizers in your area if
you think they might be interested.
Thanks!
Emily Addison
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Virus-free.
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