As you may have heard, we presented the "Lace in the New World" proposal for the 2022 OIDFA Congress at the Administrative Council (AC) meeting in Sweden on Friday, June 30th. AC members (who do the actual voting) were present from Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, the UK and USA. The vote was taken on Sunday, and we lost the bid; 11 for and 19 against. And we were the only bidder, since the Irish competition had withdrawn their bid in May.
I gave the presentation and Lauran Sundin worked the computer. We were allowed 15 minute to talk with 5 minutes for questions. We were given a few minutes extra because some translation for the French occurred, and we couldn't talk during that time. We also showed a video about Santa Fe that the Tourism Office gave us, and passed out the 2017 Santa Fe tourist magazine, some maps, pens and leather luggage tags all provided by the Tourism office. People knew that we would be the only bidder since Ireland had dropped out, and an email explaining the situation was sent to all AC members in late May. Sending our proposal ahead of time so people could study it and ask questions was not allowed. All that they knew was that the USA would be bidding. We also could not contact any Administrative Council member before the presentation, even if they were potential collaborators for Lace in the New World. There were a few questions immediately after our presentation, and people had all of Saturday to talk to us if they wished. Three people asked for copies of the presentation, but no one asked to sit with us for an extended conversation. The presentation could not be sent out by the OIDFA secretary because that would involve writing everyone's email address on the message, and apparently no one knew about blind copies. One person asked me about what I meant by 'American Lace', and I did not have a good answer. I should have said that the congress is not about American Lace - it's about Lace in the Americas, but I didn't think fast enough. Another person said they were discussing whether OIDFA should really make international efforts like this. After the vote on Sunday morning we immediately asked for some feedback from the Administrative Council. One person said there wasn't enough time to study the proposal, and one said she couldn't hear me well. One person mentioned the expense and long travel time to Santa Fe, and the higher altitude of the city. My impression is that this was the main problem - no one made any comment about the proposal itself. Comments received after the meeting ended tended to focus on the belief that Santa Fe is not 'accessible' from Europe, but I have not received any examples of why this might be so. Kajsa Borg, the OIDFA president, said that this might have gone over better if it had been made 10 years earlier when people were younger. I did try to emphasize that there would be live streaming of some events, and that we would contact immigrant groups in the USA to see if they could help with travel. But this was not enough. The fact that this event would be important to the countries of the New World was apparently overshadowed by travel issues. And we were also at a disadvantage because only two countries in the Americas have voting AC members. Was there a bias because of Mr. Trump? Possibly, but nobody talked about it. I think that was probably a very minor effect. We were told that we could try again in 2018. But I think there is a very fundamental problem here. Our proposal is about helping lace in the Americas and about bringing awareness of the art to the USA and other "New World" countries in a manner that has not been done before. I hope we communicated that in the proposal, and I don't see anything that we need to change (three of the Executive Committee members told us that it was the best proposal they had ever received). But if the real concern is the stress of travel - I don't know how to fix that. Speaking for myself, I am not inclined to make another bid with OIDFA. I think it would be better to concentrate on efforts in our own hemisphere, so we are looking for other opportunities to hold this event, still in Santa Fe. The organizers are taking a rest and regrouping. Our collaborators in Santa Fe are still supportive, and this is just too good an idea to drop. We just need find a new approach. I will tell you that I have just resigned as an OIDFA Administrative Council member, since my whole reason for doing that job no longer exists. And I need to get back to LaceNews, which has been sorely neglected during the past 6 months while preparing for this presentation. If you want to see the proposal that we presented, it is on dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/home/OIDFA%20Presentation Laurie ___________________________________________________________________ Laurie Waters 505-412-2873 lswaters...@comcast.net <mailto:lswaters...@comcast.net> , lacen...@gmail.com <mailto:lacen...@gmail.com> - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
