Calontir's annual Queen's Prize Tournament is upcoming, an annual event in which artisans with a Grant of Arms or higher sponsor artisans with less than a GoA in a face-to-face critique setting. The populace chooses one winner, and Her Majesty another. It is an excellent way for newer artisans to get feedback on their work and to be seen, and a way for people to network, find mentors in their field, and for the grandeur of Calontir's up and coming artisans to be on display.
I must admit, I've always had mixed feelings about competitions in the arts. Having been in the SCA for something like 33 years, I've participated as both competitor and judge in many. I've had my share of being "burned" by judges with less than tactful presentation, and I've been overly sensitive to feedback myself. In addition, art is not about competition, it is about itself. There are many other ways of showing our SCA art - and that is the topic of another post to come!
However, with this event on our horizon, it seems appropriate to put digital pen to work and organize a few thoughts about judging and giving feedback in competitions. This is an art unto itself, and one not everyone is good at - no matter their skill in their particular field.
At our competitions in Calontir (Queen's Prize and Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championships), we try and have a trio of judges for each entry, mixing a very experienced judge with two others of varying degrees of experience. In this way, hopefully the more experienced can mentor the less so, gradually building better judges. We also use face-to face judging, where the entrant has more back and forth discussion with the judges, and the opportunity to learn and to expand on their written documentation. The hope is to decrease fear of judging, and to create a more supportive and educational atmosphere.
Sadly, we still have instances where judges fail in their responsibilities to be supportive, educational, mentoring and gentle. We also have entrants who are thin-skinned, or who simply do not take feedback well. Others have difficulty separating their work from themselves, and see criticism as an attack upon themselves as people.
Gentle judging is an art, and one that takes practice and thought, just like any other. It requires conscious effort on the part of a judge, especially when faced with a competition entrant who is nervous, argumentative, thin-skinned, or who presents with an entry that is just plan bad. All these things have happened to me, and they will happen in most every competition. Below are a few things I have learned over the past three decades from both sides of the judging table.
1. As a judge, remember why you are there, which is primarily as a guide, mentor, teacher, friend. You are not there to rip someone's work to shreds, nor to find everything possible that is wrong with their work. Even in a Championships setting, we are still honor-bound to teach and support.
2. When judging, start by asking, "Do you want feedback, or just the numbers?" - referring to our judging criteria rubric, wherein different parts of the criteria (workmanship, documentation, etc.) are given scores between 0 and 8, for instance, for judges to score. Some entrants truly just "want the numbers." Others could not care less about the numbers - they want the discussion and the feedback.
3. Get the entrant talking about their entry. Ask them how they think they did, what did they learn on this project, what do they think they did well, and what do they think they could do better. Ask them to tell you who would have used it, and for what, or if it is a performance - who would have performed it, and it what circumstances. People are their own worst critics. Use these questions as points to jump into your mentoring/educator role. Even on the most horribly done project, most entrants will have learned something and will have done something potentially correct. You can use this to build upon. Ask them if they would like some more information for their next project, and if they do - provide it! At the bare minimum, use this opportunity as one for teaching a budding artist and for encourage them to keep working. Build up, rather than tear down, always.
4. Read the documentation! Many people are terrified to do documentation in the first place, and then when judges skip looking at it, it reinforces the idea that it is not needed. Most documentation also has photos and references. Don't nit pick on spelling, formatting, etc. You need to know the basic journalistic questions: Who, What, When, Why, Where, How. There needs to be something resembling resources listed. Photos or photocopies of extant objects are good, if applicable. If you are judging something that involves exploratory archaeology i.e. what if.... because there isn't really any hard evidence - take that into consideration. Is this plausible, given the explanation of the entrant? Ask questions about their documentation - did they explain what they did, why they did it, why they made the choices they did, and is it reasonable?
5. Remember the Medieval Aesthetic! People in the Middle Ages bought or traded for supplies and materials. They had guilds, merchants, specialists. They did not all go "sheep to shawl," and we must not expect our artisans to do so, either. Counting anyone, even at the highest levels, off any points for not making their own tools, growing their own flax, dyeing their own fibers, making their own pigments, etc. is simply unacceptable unless the competition is specifically listed as a "sheep to shawl" or "farm to fork" type event. Please do not expect that a seamstress would have also prepared her fibers, spun them, woven them into cloth, made her own needles, etc. In most places during most of our time period, she would not have done so, any more than a scribe would have made his own hide vellum, traveled to multiple countries to gather stones to grind into pigments, etc.
6. Most of all, remember the times when you were new at your skill, and how nervous you were when you first showed it to anyone. Perhaps look at photos of your early work, compared to now. See how your work has evolved, and remember you didn't get here alone. People helped, encouraged, mentored and taught you. If someone had told you your work was awful, you might never have continued. How would you have liked to have been critiqued back then? Choose your words with care and with love for your fellow artisans.
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