When I was a Girl Scout many years ago, we'd always have an event during the day near the founder's birth to celebrate her birthday and network (more or less) with other girls in the district. I think the event was two to four hours, had contests and trials to test our knot tying skills and ability to read trail markers. My favorite part of the entire day was the swap meet.
In the weeks leading up to the event, our troop decided on some sort of handcrafted pin to make. Sometimes the pins referenced the Scouts (I think we made a really ugly uniform from felt one year); sometimes the pins referenced nothing in particular (my favorite was the year we made felt teddy bears that everyone wanted). Since everything was budgeted in Scouts and came from either the dues or fundraising money, the swaps were always inexpensively made in our meetings. The design (swap front, usually felt with other crafty stuff glued on) was glued to a safety pin and our troop name and number were on a tag on the back. We made enough swaps so there was one to trade with someone from each troop in our district. We pinned the swaps to sashes and approached girls to swap swaps at the appropriate point in the day. I loved everything about swaps, except the ugly designs the troop leaders would sometimes dream up and make us do.
I would love to do swaps with other performers in the community. Maybe at some festival or other we could do a swap meet. Everybody brings 20 matching pins with their name and city on the back, then they trade with people from other cities. I'm still trying to work out the perfect way to do it in burlesque. The wonderful thing is that people walk away from the swap meet with memoirs of the people they met, little treasures for their burlesque treasure chest. I think it's brilliant. (Of course, it's my idea and I am a genius. Ha!)
I like it! I was a Girl Scout too, but we never did anything like that.
ReplyDelete