Liz and Spiders, I tend to share the worries about a possible decline in lace - witness the suppliers who have *gone under* over the last fifteen years! When I think back 20/22 years, I was the Events Secretary for both Essex and Suffolk Lace Makers, (at differing times, but bobbing back and forth like a bad openny!) in the UK. In Essex, when I first stsrated, we used the largest village hall in the country, and also hired the side rooms for the suppliers. The hall help 250, we sold all 250 tickets, and had a waiting list just in case any lace-makers dropped out. Similarly, in Suffolk, the hall held nearly 200 - all tickets were sold, and a waiting list for tickets.
Nowadays, we are lucky if we can sell 100 tickets in both Essex and Suffolk (I am not involved on the Committees for either at present, but a quick headcount shows that the attendance is *not* what it used to be - but if the figures are totally wrong, no doubt someone will correct me!). The halls used - or the percentage of the halls - extra rooms for suppliers etc - have decreased in size to accommodate the smaller numbers. However, I am not sure that this is showing a decline in Lace Makers. A quick scan of the "Events" pages in the Lacemakers' Circle or the Lace Guild newsletters shows that a dedicated Lace-maker (and aren't we all?) could attend a Lace Day or Suppliers Fair most weekends of the year. When I started to make lace, there certainly wasn't the proliferation of lace groups and consequent events held - so for those events that were staged, attendance was very high indeed. Nowadays, we can attend the events closest to us, and even if we only belong to one county group,. we can still average about one event a month. Perhaps a better indication of the state of lace-making is the number of new lace-makers being introduced to the art. Are the classes managing to recruit new members - especially younger people? Are we able to publicise lace-making enough to keep up the recruitment figures? I am lucky in my classes - they are private classes, but held in local schools, and because they are not local education classes, I can have youngsters under the age of 15 in the class, which, when the classes I taught were run by the LEA, was not possible for some unexplained reason. (Again, this was several years ago, so things may well have improved ........) This perhaps doesn't clarify the position much more, but I do hope it gives some food for thought! Carol - in a dry and sunny, albeit a bit chilly, Suffolk UK> ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 6:57 AM Subject: Re: [lace] Is Lace Declining? - Can anybody help? - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
