Unto the Populace of the Far West does your Baronial A&S minister
Documentation send Greetings.
With the A&S Tournament closely approaching I wanted to point out a
few important things to remember prior to the April 23rd event. First
we are in need of a qualifed 3rd Judge. At this point we are 1 short of
the required 3. If you have experience in the A&S side of the SCA and
would like to volunteer and will be present, please contact myself or
Baron Turtious ASAP. In the event that a 3rd judge can't be found
prior to the event then their Excellency's have agreed to be the 3rd
Judge. The way this will happen, 3 days prior to the event (Tuesday,19th
of April) All entrants will need to submit an electronic copy of their
documentation and GOOD digital photos or your items. Please take
pictures of things like period and not period stitches on garments, and
close ups of things that might make your piece stand out. The baron
will Judge all entry's starting Wednesday, and will not share his
judging sheets until saturday morning in which it will be mailed to
Master Klement, or Baroness Abe to be tallied with the their scores.
Now on to the important stuff. There have been baronial changes to
the C&T which can be found in the newest farwest tidings, If you have
not taken the time to read through them, please do. The important
change that affects us in the upcoming tournament is Judging, and what
is considered seperate entry's. In the past a scroll could only be
counted as an illumination, or a caligraphy entry, not both. Now we can
actually combine entry's AS LONG AS ONE ISN'T DEPENDENT ON THE OTHER.
You do have to document each seperately. For example if you are
entering a period cooked food, but you created your own spices that was
used as part of the recipe. You can't enter one entry as cooked item,
and one entry as period spices because the cooked item was dependent on
the spices as part of the recipe. If there is any clarification as to
what can be entered, please either contact myself or preferably the
Baron and Baroness as they have the final say so.
Judging rules have been better defined as well. We will use West
kingdom Judging sheet at future A&S coronets. The big change here,
there are 3 different judging sheets instead of the single judging sheet
we used to use. Which sheet is used depend on what the entry is. The
three sheets are;
1. Item,
arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/forms/judging-sheet.pdf<http://arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/forms/judging-sheet.pdf>
2. Performance,
arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/forms/performance.pdf<http://arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/forms/performance.pdf>
3. Research.
arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/forms/research.pdf<http://arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/forms/research.pdf>
I have uploaded all three of these sheets into the files section.
Please remember these few things when you are judging;
1. that each judge must judge independently of each other. Please do
not discuss, or compare scores while judging. This keeps the things fair
and "open minded". you can ask another judge for clarification of
something if you don't understand.
2. Second, All items are to be judged independently and not compared
to another entrants or the same entrants item. What this means is when
you are judging, judge each piece as if it was the only item that needs
to be judged and give your true opinion of that item. If you catch
yourself looking around the room at another item to figure out what you
will score, then your not judging each item without bias or comparison.
3. If you commit to judging, please expect to be present until the
judging process is complete, and all scores have been tallied. If you
leave during judging, then your votes will be discared and not counted
and a new judge will have to be selected to judge.
4. a minimum of 3 judges are required, preferably people with
experience in A&S and judging.
We make every effort to find judges who are knowledgeable about the
particular topic of the competition, but we are limited to those
individuals present at the event and available at the time of the
competition.
Judges are asked to sign their names on the judging sheets, and all
judging sheets are returned to the entrants. We consider judging forms
to be private, so they will be returned directly to the entrant, and are
not available for perusal by other entrants or by the populace. If the
entrant does not pick them up, they can be retrieved from the
appropriate A&S Officer at a subsequent event.
For the entrant:
Documentation is an important part of the competition because it's your
opportunity to tell the judges about the work you've done.
Here are some tips for good documentation:
* Provide some historical context for your work: explain your
research and demonstrate to the judges that you understand how, why,
when, where, and who did this sort of work in the medieval period.
Indicate your level of expertise in the topic area.
Provide a "recipe" of your piece:
* explain how you made your piece, what materials and supplies you
used, and why you may have made any substitutions from what was actually
used in period.
* While printouts of web pages may form part of a good set of
documentation, they are not sufficient on their own.
* Include a bibliography of your research sources.
* Entries must be anonymous, so don't put your name on your
documentation.
* Make it legible and easy to read, then staple or bind it so it
won't get scattered.
* Provide three copies of your documentation for each entry (one for
each judge).
More Information can be found in the West Kingdom A&S handbook that can
be found here.
arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/2008/handbook.html<http://arts-sciences.westkingdom.org/2008/handbook.html>
YIS,
Lord Otto Spilman - Baronial A&S Minister