Review of the workshop on 24th November 2024 via Zoom, attended by 60 participants and speakers.
Colin Messer of Green Man Sword in Epsom, Surrey, writes:
“Here’s my summary of a very interesting talk about Recruitment expereinces, from two very different teams.
Intro:
John Brenner and Eddie Worrall each provided a case study of successful recruitment practices from their personal experience. They provided frameworks to build recruitment and insights on the perspective of the team, target audience, and recruits. The questions and discussion introduced other recruitment challenges and solution approaches. Almost every team will find at least one idea to implement that will improve their recruitment; to echo Michael Mosley, try changing “Just one thing.”
Structure
The workshop was structured with two speakers and time for questions and discussion at the end of each presentation. This gave the speaker time to develop their material and for the audience to explore how their individual challenges could be addressed.
John Brenner of Five Rivers Morris
A useful model taken from marketing and how this can be applied to recruitment, looking at recruitment from the teams perspective and then from the recruits perspective.
Marketing | Recruitment |
What are you selling and to whom? | Appeal: Position the team: e.g. trad/event/exercise |
How do people find out about your product? What’s your brand? | Channels: How do people find out about you? |
Where can people find and buy your product? | Join: How easy is it to contact, join and keep coming? |
How do you compare to your competitors? | Barriers: commitment, cost, social status. Compare with similar: gym, clubs, Netflix. |
The perspective and actions may vary depending on the stage that a team is at for example:
– When starting out – an opportunity to shape a team,
– With strong membership – targeting the people you need,
– If struggling/ageing – consider a re-vamp of kit, a change of direction.
Recruitment should be targeted whatever stage the team is at, as a broad brush is rarely effective.
The conversion pathway from initial contact to joining will depend on the background and exposure of the potential recruit:
– General public: They will probably be starting from limited awareness
– Folkies: Will it be welcoming, would I be good enough, would I enjoy it?
– Existing Morris dancers: Is it physically possible for me, it is logistically possible.
Consider issues of diversity and inclusion: Are you acknowledging the barriers when recruiting? What can be done to address these barriers?
Case study of Five Rivers
John gave a quick summary of the team. He reviewed the membership considering: morris experience, how they came across the team, age segment and family circumstance, and concluded that in practice those they now recruit through the social scene (friends, and friends of friends) are broadly similar to existing membership, particularly with reference to age group.
He found the reasons for joining were that Five Rivers was a fun and supporting team, that they wanted to learn to dance, that they wanted to dance with a good team, to get exercise, and of course a Five Rivers hoodie. [Ed. Who wouldn’t?]
The team approach was to: Do what we say we will do, be visible, be obviously welcoming, make an effort with family, encourage members to recruit, make practices fun, don’t push for commitment as it is highly likely that Morris is not their top priority, and to try to get people into kit in 6 months.
Perceived or suspected barriers to joining were: clashes for practice night, common dress can look like a clique, blokey culture, not mixed, people may worry they can’t meet the fitness or quality, there are already plenty of good musos in the team so unlikely to recruit, drinking (and pork pies) is not who we are, but it is an undeniable feature of the team.
Discussion items following John’s presentation:
What do we do to help a group where the numbers of members attending are on or below viable (for a rapper set).
Suggested approaches:
– Devise dances for that reduced number (doesn’t work for rapper).
– Open evening on different days and times to the regular practice, approach the local council.
– Reinvent yourselves, take the open practices to the potential recruits, take a poll for each practice to encourage attendance.
– Merge with another team and divide practice night up between styles.
Why start a new team in Sheffield where there are already so many sides?
– Preference for modern kit,
– a desire to dance trad dances,
– move away from morris bands to single/pairs of musicians.
Eddie Worrall of Saddleworth Women’s Morris & Clog
Introduced Saddleworth Women’s Morris & Clog and outlined the context in which the team was formed. Following last year’s Rushcart, hosted by men-only side Saddleworth morris there was discussion on local Facebook groups about the lack of an equivalent women’s team from Saddleworth. It was evident that there was significant interest in forming a new team.
An open evening was advertised and around 30 women attended, a pattern of attendance that continued as the team moved to regular practice. Most team members had no background in morris or folk.
The team aimed for a specific event to focus interest (a hook), to get people involved and give the team a definite target. Thereafter regular practices became a classic team building exercise, keeping people engaged and giving them agency within the team and thinking about how to structure an evening to give beginners confidence and encourage them to achieve success.
The age recruited varied from 20’s to 70’s and so social networks extended across many levels. Eddie noted that recruitment never stops, there will always be people leaving so there must always be new recruits. Communications before and after events is important, so there is a major push after big events such as the Rushcart, as well as smaller dance outs.
Kit is really important, good kit will attract, bad kit will put people off.
It was helpful that there was a successful men’s team and events like the Rushcart to inspire the local population, there is also no other women’s team in the area, meaning little competition.
Think about hooks that will catch people, and check Brian Kelly’s advice on social media. Keep recruiting, don’t stop – if you stop that’s where it all goes wrong.
Discussion items arising from Eddie’s presentation:
Inter-Team Cooperation
It can be hard persuading established teams to change. Teams should help each other, for example if critical mass is difficult to achieve then help each other out so event can happen and that new members don’t fell over pressured. yes, when starting this can be very helpful, but splitting members between teams can produce problems when dancing out. Try involving other team members for open days / workshops.
Culture
– Think about bridging the gap between the team’s culture and where a new member is coming from. explaining the team’s culture to someone from a different culture.
Kids
– Changing team culture to include kids can be a big change but may be worth considering.
– Five Rivers settled on 12+ with their responsible adult.
– Set up a separate children’s team, which can be a great legacy to leave.
Messaging & social media
For Saddleworth WM&C there were 10 Facebook groups with 40K membership (not de-duped) and the local press.
For Five Rivers communications though local radio and TV hasn’t been successful.
It’s really important to send a positive message – not ‘help us or we will fold’.
New recruits that don’t attend practice or drop-out early
If you have their emails, telephone numbers etc. Find out the reason why, and see if there’s a solution. It may be lack of confidence, transport etc. Think about the barriers to joining.
Recruiting in culturally diverse urban areas
Five Rivers think about this a lot, and are planning to broaden the scope of groups they dance with, such as appearing with a Bhangra dance group.
by Colin Messer of Green Man Sword in Epsom, Surrey.
Your speakers
Jon Brenner of Five Rivers Morris in Sheffield, a member of the Morris Federation.
Eddie Worrall of Saddleworth Women’s Morris and Clog in Greater Manchester, a member of the Morris Ring.
Resources
Here are the summary notes from the workshop: summary notes from the 2024 JMO Recruitment workshop.
See also:
- Recruitment tips on the MF web site: https://www.morrisfed.org.uk/for-teams/recruitment/ and summary notes from the 2023 JMO Recruitment workshop
- Recruitment tips on the MR web site: https://themorrisring.org/sides/recruitment-future-morris-world
- Morris census data from 2023, 2020, 2017 and 2014 is at: https://www.morriscensus.uk/
Video Recording: The video recording is now publicly available on the MF YouTube channel at:
