How many people are involved in Living history?

[destinationalliances]

I want to ask the group how many people they think are involved in Living History in the UK - I mean people who re-enact, travel with e.g their families etc.What do you think the largest group of followers are in terms of history period? Help appreciated!

[Mark Griffin]

You might be looking at about 6 thousand all told, can't see it going above 10. There is a difficulty in how you define it but if you broadly said people who dressed up in historical clothing and participated in events in whatever way then 10k tops.

Largest groups or eras represented (and this includes some umbrella organisations, i have no idea what individual regiments memberships are) are probably the English and American Civil Wars. Then probably Napoleonics, dark ages and medieval. WW2 next and then less well represented eras such as WW1 (which will see a surge of interest soon) and then the victorians and other cultures.

Medieval centers mostly on mid 15th century, Wars of the Roses.

[Lord High Everything Esle]

It rather depends on what you mean by dressing up.

Do you count the crowds of WWII lookalikes who throng the town of Pickering in October or the thousands who dress in Victorian costume for the Dickensian festivals in Kent or the Victorian events in Llandridnod Wells etc?

Will/Dave

[Shadow7cat]

And there are numbers of dance groups who wear costume of varying degrees of authenticity. Do you include them? PLus groups who just wear costume for social events, and all those costumed interpreters, such as those at Hampton Court...

S.

[uksimes]

And the scary LARP types who think a tight green velvet dress and daggers attached to their heavily engraved bracers is genuine medieval??

[ForTheMarshal]

Don't forget the folks who cross periods or are members of multiple groups/societies too

[John Waller]

I want to ask the group how many people they think are involved in Living History in the UK - I mean people who re-enact, travel with e.g their families etc.What do you think the largest group of followers are in terms of history period? Help appreciated!

Griff's answer is probably somewhere near the mark but no one really knows. Out of interest, why do you want to know?

A scan through Duke Henry's old Call to Arms directory might give an indication if you could be bothered to add up the membership numbers claimed by the listed groups, factor in the fact that the info is out of date, deduct a % for people in more than one group, add a pinch of salt and take away the number you first thought of!

[acecat999]

you have to deduct the Beer and Bash types though, and Promenarders cos we is better than them

[Foxe]

Assuming that not everybody involved with LH has responded to this thread, I think you'd be pretty safe with an estimate of "definitely more than eight".

[Bad Viking]

Breaking this down further, there are those that are combat oriented and others that are living history orientated - ie crafty types and delivering talks and interactive stuff with the pubic.
Living history for me is more interesting as it tries to give insights into the day to day stuff, combat - although very enjoyable and is a crowd puller, was not really a part of the day to day activity of people in most settings in history.

[SirRustbucket]

Cynically I might say: not half as many people who proclaim to do living history actually do proper living history. Not that there's anything wrong with generic muddyevil re-enacting, mind. So long as people know what they are doing and realise there is a difference.

Just by the way, how come destinationalliances has not got a user profile? Banned or Guest Account?

[Lord High Everything Esle]

I suppose there is a wide spectrum of people involved in Living History.

Possibly that was what I was trying to think about when I started this thread

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31061

[Lord High Everything Esle]

I suppose there is a wide spectrum of people involved in Living History.

Possibly that was what I was trying to think about when I started this thread

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31061

I think the only thing that every part of living history has in common is wearing funny clothes.

In addition to that you can choose from the following list:
public performance
paid a fee
original research
secondary research
making artifacts (museum standard, reasonable reproduction or 10ft accuracy (theatrical) and clothes
collecting artifacts and clothes
first, second or third person
"live the life" or "just while in public"
speaking or non-speaking.

Each of these has its own spectrum.

It rather depends where you set your barrier as to how many Living Historians there are. So anywhere between 1 and 100,000 !!

[Martin]

strange, the thread was started in April and only now has there been more replies, who has been bored and surfing old threads lol ? is the initial question setter not interested in replies ? is it a TV bod looking for info ? strange to ask a question and not even offer thanks for the replies

[SteveC]

strange, the thread was started in April and only now has there been more replies, who has been bored and surfing old threads lol ? is the initial question setter not interested in replies ? is it a TV bod looking for info ? strange to ask a question and not even offer thanks for the replies

A little bit of Google work suggests that "destinationalliances" is a commercial organisation. And the lack of profile would indicate that they've left the forum so won't be seeing any replies. Strange behaviour perhaps, but if it's been done 'for work' and you don't get the responses you want/expect then de-cluttering by deleting your account would make some sort of sense. We seem to have quite a lot of 'members' here who sign up, make the one enquiry or announcement and then disappear--not even waiting for any follow up.

S