Jam to Guild

I have been jamming for the past few months w/ a few ladies. All are well to somewhat established. I'd love to really get this thing going, but don't want to "face paint mommies", the people who come & never paint, the people who only want to take notes & never give/share, etc..... I'm interested in how to get a Guild going, etc.


Advice would really be appreciated.
Thanks!

MelodyFPL and I were just talking about this the other day. We have a Guild, would like to make it stronger and would like to have a clearer definition as to what a Guild truly should be doing.

I think CJ (LadyJayde) and Martha (a face painting mom) both belong to efficient guilds.

Hi ladies,
We do have guilds in Ohio and the one I'm with (theNEO guild) is probably the most complained about because of how structured we are, lol!

I started out looking for a mentor and then looking for a way to network with other paintes. Once we'd formed a good group of relatively ethical (lol) painters I decided that it was time to work towards forming a formal guild. There were two reasons why I wanted this:

1. I wanted a safe environment for we competitors to be able to let our competitive guards down and realize the benefit that result from ethical competition within a networking evironment. I wanted to be able to call on those painters to help me out without having to worry about them trying to steal gigs from me in the future.

2. I wanted to form a group that was mutually beneficial for everyone. I didn't want the people who would come to our meetings just to take notes and pictures to continue to benefit without contributing. When we announced that our gulld would be a non-teaching guild but that we would work to arrange for instructors to come to teach for a fee, the true colors came out and our jams whittled from 13+ attendees to about 8 or 9.

We have bi-laws and executive board and we were fortunate to have a long standing member with a degree in political science to help us (and get roped into being the president...a role I refused to assume). We have disciplinary review procedures for formal complaints and we have a code of conduct/ethics.

We've lost members who've decided that our stance on ethics in business ethics as it pertained to other guild members was overreaching (despite being clearly outlined in the bi-laws that every member voted into existence) or who didn't think having rules of conduct was much fun even if they were put in place to protect the reputation of the guild. We even have an ex member who does her level best to disparage our name to anyone who'll listen, but we're more focused on our goal: To expand the awareness of professional face and body painting in North East Ohio and to educate the public about dangers of craft products in body art.

We do charity events as a guild and have been gaining in noteriety, but it's a lot of work...and a lot of drama to wade through.

We do collect dues and the Treasurer and President keep control of that aspect. I'm in charge of the Programs and am tasked with organizing any guild function from Jams to charity events. Visitors are allowed 2 free jam sessions after which the must pay $15 per session if they haven't submitted an application.

We have an application process and a vetting process and each member is required to be an established painter (as in having worked in the industry to some extent) with a current liability insurance policy and a background check (for the restaurant we jam at).

I love knowing that I have a network of painters that I can go to when I need help for an event or someone to cover an event for me and I love knowing that because of that network, there is very little interest on the part of the members to train up new painters. We've had a couple of new/aspiring painters visit but only one has recently joined us, the others pretty much wanted to join because they thought that by joining we would get them jobs without them having to truly do the legwork...it never works out. We recently joined forces with Joe Glenn of Zombie Skin who wants to be affliliated with us, so maybe we're doing something right?

We have a pretty good group with it's own quirks and drama pockets, but it's been beneficial in making the market just a little less cut throat for the members of the guild.

Martha's guild (the Columbus (Souther Ohio) Guild) is known for it's classes and it's industry heavy hitters (Jody Rife, Robbie Hay, Margie McGuire). We're trying to get together and get more classes for Northeast Ohio but we usually go down to Columbus to take classes.

This is a heady topic.

As Lady Jade notes in order to regulate your Guild you need to put it in writing and then be willing to defend that position. You may take some heat from those sorta gray area professionals (and define professional!), and maybe others too!. But then a "Guild" per se is by definition an exclusive body of artists. Most Guilds don't really work that way but rather as an overall networking group.

Check with several "Guilds" to see what they do and how they run.