Shire Pride Demo 2026

Shire Pride Demo Pride 2026

First post: 3/16/2026

For the third year running, my shire has been asked to run a demo at the a local pride event!!  (The fact that one of the organizers is part of our Shire might be part of the reason, but the rest of the staff and attendees seemed to be interested in us as well in years past, soooo)   For the third year running, I am also the demo coordinator.  Because of the current modern situation, I will not use names other than my own. 

After accepting the demo coordinator role once more (I'm happy to train up a deputy if one shows interest), I made my list of things that needed doing.  Because the demo location is actually in the lands of a neighboring group, I needed to get permission from said group to proceed.   At this time, I have received said permission from the neighboring group to hold the demo on their lands and am working on the rest.  

Basically, everything pending breaks down into one of the three below categories:

 
Advertising 

• Website - done.  Our webminister is amazing :D  We have a page under the Shire's demo activities section.  

• Email - done.  I do not like to use solely algorithmic social media nor chat based social media, so formal email invites have gone out to the neighboring groups. 

• FB event - Pending - I had wanted to wait until the main event's FB page was live, but I may just go ahead and copy our demo FB event from last year to get the ball rolling on that.  I don't like to wait to the last minute, and the location/time/date are set so updates will just be to activities. 

• FB Advertising - Pending - Once I create the event page, I'll advertise it out on the neighboring group, the shire, and the region's FB groups for coverage.  

• Discord - Pending - While I could technically do this before making the FB event and just reference the website, I prefer to have both available.  I'm also not the biggest fan of Discord tbh, as things move too quickly.  Still I'll put it in the region and neighboring group discord sections of the relevant channels.  

Social media advertising will go out in at least two rounds - end of Mar and right before the event at the start of June.  Ideally I'll also have one in-between, but we'll see how FB in particular treats the first round.  The last events I was advertising for - Bardic Madness and Artisan's Day - had the event advertisements held up for up to two months on some groups!!!

Activities

• Tables - A pair of tables with misc SCA items for people to look at and touch, being brought by SCA attendees.  No weapons will be allowed at all!!

• Pamphlet - We will have a pamphlet for people to take with history information on queer folks in period!  I need to make this pamphlet for others to print.

• Other swag - This was brought up at the last shire meeting and people are brainstorming.  

• Pinata - approved at the last shire meeting, our youth minister will once again have a pinata for the kids

• Music group - contacted to see if they would like to perform again

Items - this list is mostly for my own accounting, but also an example of the list of things of concern for anyone else setting up a demo in an open park space

• Tables - accounted for

• Chairs - people will bring their own

• Canopies - accounted for

• Pinata - accounted for

• Pamphlets - need to be drafted and then printed

• Swag items - need to be approved and created/acquired 

• Food/water - being provided by the main event.