As an educational not for profit corporation

As an educational not for profit corporation, we are pleased to share our knowledge and enthusiasm for the Middle ages with schools, civic groups and other organizations in the form of talks, displays and demonstrations. To arrange a presentation for your group or volunteer to be a presenter contact the Chatelaine H.L. Katerina von Altenstein . Please remember this isn't our day job so availability of specific demonstrations will vary.

Costumed speakers present talks on topics close to their hearts. above Renart answers a question from the audience.

The Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA) is a club for people who like history. Our members range all the way from people who saw one too many movies with swords in them, to people who can drive to a campground and live for a week as a medieval person, complete with clothing, shoes, tent, food, music, science, and crafts. We enjoy our hobby so much that we give demos to share it. We do several different types of demos. Usually we give demos to let other people know about us, so they can join us if they want. (In Kitsap County we hold Medieval Faire in Port Gamble on the first weekend of June.) Sometimes we give demos just to add a medieval flavor to an occasion. For many of us our favorite type of demo is for a school, which we do as a community service.

Demonstrators can speak enthusiastically on a variety of subjects. Above Eric De Dragonslaire shares a medieval pastime- storytelling.

The goal of a SCA school demo is to educate and entertain. We try to bring history to life for the students. The size of a school demo can range all the way from one SCA person spending an hour telling an elementary class about the Medieval Ages, to twenty SCA members spending the whole day at a high school so every history class has a chance to ask questions and see historical crafts and arts.

Whatever the size of a demo, the SCA members will always come dressed for the time they are recreating. We love it if the students come dressed up too. We like to hear what the class has been studying so we have some idea what they might like to see or hear about. We did a demo last year at a middle school that had been studying explorers, so we tailored our demo to that. We talked about the different foods and scientific techniques that came from North, Central, and South America, the countries that had sent the explorers, and how the new items and information spread across Europe.

Anne Gryffyth shares medieval fashions with a school group.

We can show how styles changed through history and why. We can talk about the evolution of castles and their defenses. We can talk about how you clothe yourself with a field of linen or a flock of sheep. We can demonstrate how to make chain mail. Perhaps the students would like to hear about famous battles and historical figures. We can show things we have made: pots, fabric, embroidery, armor, the list goes on and on. We describe a world where it would take them a month to make a pair of pants and the average person only had two outfits. We can describe what the daily life of the audience would be like in the past.

We ask the students to imagine what life was like in the past. We ask them to imagine the excitement of living in a time full of adventure, with so many things just waiting to be discovered or figured out. We ask them to imagine a world where only the privileged got to go to school. Our goal is for the students to realize that history is not a dull and dry thing, but instead is so interesting that some adults choose to study it for fun, even after they are done with school.

Welcome to the

Current Middle Ages.

Join us for a Demonstration.