How to Start a Pagan Club
This article was inspired by a thread just started on the LiveJournal Pagan community about launching a club for Pagan students. The following tips are based on my experience as a student, as a teacher and administrator, as a speaker at clubs, and as a Pagan leader in general.
Basic Steps
1) Get your school's guidelines for club formation. That should tell you what is required (meeting frequency, faculty supervisor, minimum membership, etc.) of you and what resources if any are available. Ask if there's a tip sheet for starting a new club.
2) Gather support. Ideally you need at least two other students who are enthusiastic about this project and reliable enough to help make it happen. Don't try to do this alone.
3) Find a faculty advisor. (Most schools require this; some may not.) If there are no visible Pagan teachers, try those who are known to be flexible, who practice a religion other than Christianity/Judaism/Islam, or who teach subjects like mythology or comparative religions.
4) If possible, make the club open to alternative religions in general, rather than only Paganism. Many students will be spiritual seekers, potentially interested but not having decided a path yet. Others may be scared off by terms like "Pagan" or "Witch" when they don't yet know enough to realize they'd be interested in the activities. Be inclusive; it widens your potential audience.
5) Choose a meeting time and place that will be convenient for as many people as possible. Most schools will provide a meeting room for any student club, usually with desks or a table and chairs. (Be very careful to document your room assignment and schedule: an easy and subtle form of harassment for unpopular clubs is for the administration to change your room assignment without notice. Be prepared to back your claims with paperwork.) Keep meetings of reasonable length (1-2 hours) and frequency (weekly, biweekly, or monthly). A good meeting format is: introduction, business, education or recreation, socializing, wrap-up. Make sure people enjoy your meetings, or they won't come back.
6) Brainstorm some activities for your club. You might observe your school's most successful clubs to see what they're doing right. Good possibilities include, but are not limited to:
7) Serve refreshments at your meetings and rituals. Even storebought cookies and soda will help attract people. Good homemade food will really attract people. For best results, offer a combination of sweet and savory snacks that are reasonably healthy, such as: fruit juice, lunchmeat and cheese on crackers, and chocolate cupcakes. If you have enough members who can cook, follow the Pagan custom of potlucks.
8) After your core group has met two or three times, start promoting your club. Schools have different options for advertising student events; ask for the parameters. Typical options include posting flyers on bulletin boards, chalking the sidewalks, or putting a notice in the school newspaper. Especially check school and local services for a "community calendar" in which you can list your event schedule. You may also want to post information about your club on The Witches' Voice or other online networking venues.
9) Solicit feedback from club members. If you have officers, they should listen to input from other students. Get people involved and invested in making your club a success.
10) Keep records of what you do and whether or not it works. Build up resources that you can reuse. An event calender, contact information for helpful people, a cheat-sheet of chants, ritual outlines, favorite recipes, etc. can be kept in a club binder and passed from one President to another.
This article originally appeared in The Wordsmith's Forge on March 31, 2008.
Basic Steps
1) Get your school's guidelines for club formation. That should tell you what is required (meeting frequency, faculty supervisor, minimum membership, etc.) of you and what resources if any are available. Ask if there's a tip sheet for starting a new club.
2) Gather support. Ideally you need at least two other students who are enthusiastic about this project and reliable enough to help make it happen. Don't try to do this alone.
3) Find a faculty advisor. (Most schools require this; some may not.) If there are no visible Pagan teachers, try those who are known to be flexible, who practice a religion other than Christianity/Judaism/Islam, or who teach subjects like mythology or comparative religions.
4) If possible, make the club open to alternative religions in general, rather than only Paganism. Many students will be spiritual seekers, potentially interested but not having decided a path yet. Others may be scared off by terms like "Pagan" or "Witch" when they don't yet know enough to realize they'd be interested in the activities. Be inclusive; it widens your potential audience.
5) Choose a meeting time and place that will be convenient for as many people as possible. Most schools will provide a meeting room for any student club, usually with desks or a table and chairs. (Be very careful to document your room assignment and schedule: an easy and subtle form of harassment for unpopular clubs is for the administration to change your room assignment without notice. Be prepared to back your claims with paperwork.) Keep meetings of reasonable length (1-2 hours) and frequency (weekly, biweekly, or monthly). A good meeting format is: introduction, business, education or recreation, socializing, wrap-up. Make sure people enjoy your meetings, or they won't come back.
6) Brainstorm some activities for your club. You might observe your school's most successful clubs to see what they're doing right. Good possibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Presentations on specific Pagan traditions, holidays, tools, etc.
- Field trips to festivals or other events.
- Event reports from a festival that someone attended.
- Sabbat and/or esbat rituals.
- Magical crafts.
- Swap meets to exchange magical tools or books you've outgrown.
- Book signings, workshops, readings or other events featuring a local author.
- Pagan songs and/or dances.
- Pagan movies or TV shows.
7) Serve refreshments at your meetings and rituals. Even storebought cookies and soda will help attract people. Good homemade food will really attract people. For best results, offer a combination of sweet and savory snacks that are reasonably healthy, such as: fruit juice, lunchmeat and cheese on crackers, and chocolate cupcakes. If you have enough members who can cook, follow the Pagan custom of potlucks.
8) After your core group has met two or three times, start promoting your club. Schools have different options for advertising student events; ask for the parameters. Typical options include posting flyers on bulletin boards, chalking the sidewalks, or putting a notice in the school newspaper. Especially check school and local services for a "community calendar" in which you can list your event schedule. You may also want to post information about your club on The Witches' Voice or other online networking venues.
9) Solicit feedback from club members. If you have officers, they should listen to input from other students. Get people involved and invested in making your club a success.
10) Keep records of what you do and whether or not it works. Build up resources that you can reuse. An event calender, contact information for helpful people, a cheat-sheet of chants, ritual outlines, favorite recipes, etc. can be kept in a club binder and passed from one President to another.
This article originally appeared in The Wordsmith's Forge on March 31, 2008.
Photo used under Creative Commons from Frances Lane
