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greying of fandom and folkdom
Mar. 3rd, 2008 11:18 amMy two main non-family social crowds have been drawn from sf-fandom and from the folk music communities. In both of these, I hear reference to the 'greying' of the group - that there are fewer young people getting involved than there used to be, so the average age is going up.
I have some questions:
- how true is this?
- why is it happening? is it that the younger generations aren't as interested in community groups, or have they found different communities to be part of?
reasons for asking why: My main experience of the folk community (in recent years) are Fairbridge folk festival (which seems to have lots of young families), and folk dance groups (which seem to have very few people under 30 involved). I haven't been to a folk club in years (except maybe one visit to the Hills Folk club, which might have been five years ago, and one to the Mundaring one which must have been at least that long ago, and I think I've been to Kulcha once as well)
Equally, my fannish experience is predominantly in the Perth SF scene, and mostly Swancon. And there always seem to be a lot of younger people there, so maybe I'm just not looking at it right?
And one thing I wonder: is it related to the fact that people are having children later in life? I can't put together a coherent explanation for why I think that this is possible, it just strikes me as something to consider.
I have some questions:
- how true is this?
- why is it happening? is it that the younger generations aren't as interested in community groups, or have they found different communities to be part of?
reasons for asking why: My main experience of the folk community (in recent years) are Fairbridge folk festival (which seems to have lots of young families), and folk dance groups (which seem to have very few people under 30 involved). I haven't been to a folk club in years (except maybe one visit to the Hills Folk club, which might have been five years ago, and one to the Mundaring one which must have been at least that long ago, and I think I've been to Kulcha once as well)
Equally, my fannish experience is predominantly in the Perth SF scene, and mostly Swancon. And there always seem to be a lot of younger people there, so maybe I'm just not looking at it right?
And one thing I wonder: is it related to the fact that people are having children later in life? I can't put together a coherent explanation for why I think that this is possible, it just strikes me as something to consider.
