Creating a Citizen Space: Writing Guidelines

Having a written guideline for a group, site, or event eliminates a whole host of problems right off the top, by clarifying expectations, and setting out a reasonable baseline for all to meet.

However, it’s also very easy to get bulky, bloated, or overly negative with those guidelines, and that’s when we start to do a few different things:

1: Lose people to the sheer bulk of the demands

2: Lose people to feeling overwhelmed at the negative language

3: See people getting creative about loopholes to let them stick with the stagnant “I’ve got X”, versus challenging themselves to acquire targeted upgrades in material possessions and internal knowledge.

So here’s a short set of guidelines on how to write a set of guidelines!

Keep It Positive

Skip the laundry list of all the bad stuff you’ve seen in the past. Instead, give a short list of what you do want to see, including useful resources to meet that baseline.

For example:

Our women’s roles are largely working class, and call for hardworking textiles, minimal trim (if any), and very functional systems. Women will need white cotton chemise, drawers, and petticoats; a neutral all-cotton corset; a print-approved cotton one-piece dress, or lightweight wool dress; sunbonnet (for outdoor work) and accessories. Here is a list of pre-approved pattern resources; please contact Mrs Fiberson for pre-approval of your textiles prior to any purchases, and for a current list of footwear resources. We hold sewing group days on the third Wednesday of each month, in the site classroom.

This short, positive paragraph is a lot less daunting than a full page of YOU MAY NOT edicts.

Keep It Succinct: 5W, 1H

If you can’t lay out the goal of the guide by filling in the blanks here, you’ve not thought about and refined it enough. Keep working until you can be really brief, answering the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How (not necessarily in that order).

Here at [Where: Insert Site/Event Name] we focus on sharing [Who: Insert Role Overview] for [When: Insert Date Range] in [Where: Insert Historical Place].

[What & Why:] We use accurate clothing as a tool to convey a sense of time travel and historic context for our visitors.

[How:] Use this guide as a base for your wardrobe, and plan to work closely with [How: Insert Staff Mentor Contact].

If you can’t get your goal into these three sentences yet, keep refining until you can.

As an example, my girls and I volunteer at a local historical park. Writing guidelines for clothing at our site, I’d have this as our goal statement and introduction:

Here at North Bingham County Historical Park, we focus on sharing regional history from 1820 through 1940, with a special emphasis on the mid-19th century in Oregon Country, Old Oregon Territory, and Idaho Territory.

You may wear modern clothing with site insignia, or historical clothing. Those who desire to wear historical clothing use it as a tool to convey a sense of time travel and historic context for our visitors.

This guide will get you started with appropriate historical roles and clothing choices; you’ll be paired with a staff mentor to help you complete your wardrobe.

Short, sweet, positive.

Keep It Focused

Many times, we need to share specific information with specific groups. If there is generally applicable information, put it in general notes (which should not be more than one page, combined with the intro above!) One additional page for a specific role, including any very specific clothing resources applicable to that role, should suffice. If you can’t get it down to less than one page at normal type faces, keep refining and focusing!

Keep It Positive (Yes, Really.)

People are much more encouraged, and less likely to be overwhelmed, when you give them the Shoulds, versus the Shouldn’ts. There’s always a way to address oddball Shouldn’ts individually, if they arise.

Sample Inclusions for a Guide

• Intro and Goal: one-half page
• Detailed Historical Context: one-half to one page maximum, including group mentor contacts
• General Clothing/Role Notes: one page maximum including general recommended resources list
• Men’s Clothing Summary: one page including recommended resource list
• Women’s Clothing Summary: one page including recommended resource list
• Children’s Clothing Summary: one page including recommended resource list
• Specialized Roles Notes: no more than one page per specialized role
• Applicable Reading Lists for various roles: one to two pages

Overall, a guide could be as short as 6 pages and contain everything needful for a newbie to get going, or an oldbie to upgrade their items and knowledge.

Getting Specific

When it comes to discussing specific garments, follow the same process:

Item: Generally accepted textiles and features; reiteration of textiles approvals; approved pattern list (only list good ones). Any notes on limitations or specific needs for a specific garment–will this be useful at all interpretive stations, or for specific stations?

Example:

Petticoats: 1 or 2, full-gathered (140″ to 170″ circumference) white cotton petticoats, fitted waistband, hemmed to about the ankle. Good cotton is currently found at FabricUniverse and BigMart; plan 4.5 to 5 yards per petticoat. Free project sheet available in the Compendium at thesewingacademy.com. Your petticoats can be used for every interpretive station.

If you’re a multi-era event or site, it’s easy to add a short bullet list of how the specific garment morphs over time, such as specifying any significant changes in petticoat circumference, or whether or not hoops are typical for a particular role/station.

Streamline

As often as possible, streamline your information. Evaluate your materials periodically, to make sure you’ve got it refined and focused, and don’t need to add resources or shift recommendations (not all vendors maintain appropriate standards over time, and new vendors may emerge that meet your needs better, for instance.)

Is information too wordy? Can you create an online set of visual references (such as a Pinterest board), or point people to your site’s reference library? Are you recommending patterns with good instructions, and thus don’t need to reiterate techniques or illustrations in your standards packet? Have you fallen into a pit of “No No No”? Do you need to rewrite for a positive, accuracy-focused feeling?

It’s worthwhile to do the effort. When staff and volunteers are confident their clothing meets a high standard for historical accuracy, specific to the event or site interpretive focus, they can relax into the educational concepts and connections, as their clothing becomes a visual tool they don’t have to think about.

If you are needing to reform or upgrade existing staff/volunteer gear, it’s easiest to follow a streamlined, positive process there, too.

1. Make sure you have support from the Powers That Be; without admin and budget support, making positive changes is nearly impossible.
2. Make sure you have the positive base guidelines well-thought out, written, and shareable.
3. Make sure there is a valid two-option system: Volunteers may do all interpretive demonstrations in modern clothing with This Type Of Site Logo/Insignia to mark them as staff; OR, if volunteers wish to dress historically, this is the base guideline to do that. Both should be encouraged. Having the dual system gives ultimate flexibility and inclusion while maintaining high accuracy standards.
4. Work in individual mentoring sessions to get a list of needed upgrades. Taking the attitude of “your skills and knowledge are valuable, and we want to invest in upgrades to get your gear to the level of awesome you deserve,” tends to take any fuss out of the process… and they also have the option to go Full Modern, without any issues at all, if the process of accurate historical upgrades takes a bit, or they don’t want to wear the historical system after all. Create a list of priorities, in order of functional and visual impact, so there’s a clear path of progress.

I’ll upload some samples from history-heavy events that I’ve helped with as distance mentor for clothing (in the next few weeks, as we’re in our busiest season here!) One of my favorite stories about accuracy guidelines comes out of a discussion forum where people spent a lot of time bashing “hardcores” who set “unattainable standards” that were “exclusionary and classist”. I offered to share some common-sense guidelines… and when those were published, they were met with exclamations of “Finally, sensible stuff! Anyone can do this!” and “At last–something newbies and working class people can actually do without breaking the bank. This is really accessible, thanks!”… and then I shared that those were the guidelines I wrote for Awesome Hardcore History Heavy Citizen Event, actually–and yep, they were entirely accessible to all who wanted to have great clothing and then get on with the fun of sharing history with people.

Standards are a good thing. Well-done standards are positive, supportive, accessible, and encouraging!