I’m 38 and started building models around kindergarten age. I have young relatives who see my models and would like to build, but their mother won’t let them use the kitchen table (the table is for eating food, not playing with chemicals!).
There are many young people who when they see a good model would like to try, but LHS’s are disappearing and even if your local Wal-Mart has kits, they are woefully short of decent building supplies.
I’m just asking the viewers of this post to brainstorm and come up with some ideas as to how we can promote the hobby.
That is an excellent question and one I have toiled over for some time. I know that we had a great response from the local young folk at our contest last year with a “make and take” table. Monogram provided some snap tite kits and would be modelers under 11 were able to go up and build a kit with some assistance when needed from the club membership.We’re trying to do this again and hope to have some more turn out in the junior catagory.
I build kits with my two boys. Aged 8 and 6. It makes for good family time and they get excited about the chance to “sniff glue” with dad and not just watch him from a distance. They get to watch me up close[(-D][;)]
This topic has been brought up many times, but I love a chance to pontificate! The problem doesn’t lie so much in getting the younger kids into the hobby, it is keeping them! Make and Takes are great for the younger ones. . .then what? You bait, when you get a nibble you are supposed to set the hook, but we don’t, we let them get away! We need a program that advances to the next step in the numbered progression, the model companies set up by the way, step one being snap kits. A young man 12 years old told me at a Make and Take: “I don’t want to build toys anymore, I want to learn to build a real model.”
So my suggestion would be a Make and Take II, showing some general techniques and painting, the kids get to keep not only the finished model, but some basic tools and techniques too. So far, my suggestion has fallen upon deaf ears. I know it would work, I have had a program like this for two summers now and the second year I had only one repeat. . .someof the originals came in and helped and others came in and showed a more advanced skill,or what they were building now.
Thats exactly the point I got to about a year and a bit ago. I think its not just the not wanting to do a ‘proper’ model that gets kids, its that they think they can’t do it. Once they, like I did, realise they can, they’ll stick to it. Just my [2c]
I’ve had an idea to use modeling as a basis for a father/son activity at my church. Might be a good way to get a fun activity for father’s and their sons to work on. Of course, my main focus is not to get folks modeling, but promote a healthy relationship between kids and their dads. But having the model building as the activity will certainly introduce the hobby to folks.
I tried that at my church earlier too Jon. It was good, but the continuing effort to keep all interested to the end was difficult. There was too much “I thought it could be all done in a half hour” thoughts flowing. Most didn’t want to commit to a larger time frame or continue making more kits every meet. But on the up side, I did get two new modelers and members to our club out of it! So I guess it was successfull after all.
Buy your children models. Buy your nieces and nephews model kits too. Help them to build the kits. Spend quality time with them. Be a good example in all things.
Scale modeling and history to me seem to have a hand in hand relationship in my opinion. Perhaps instilling a healthy appreciation of history, which most youth seem not to have now days, would be a great start in the right direction.
I still believe in the modified axiom: Give a kid a model and you keep him for a day, TEACH a kid to model and you have a new member in the hobby! The success of others and myself at this proves me right,even if the numbers are small, it is still a gain. My first group of five led to five still in the hobby a year later, my second group of 8 (which shows the entire concept is a success), it’s too early to tell, we just ended last week, but I believe we have gained 6 and maybe all eight! (Three are young ladies.)
By teaching these kids to model, we give them a piece of “history” they can hold in their hands. Whether it is personnal or from a book, they don’t just get a picture, they have something they can hold in their hands, or put on a shelf and say I made that.
Glam is right, my second group all made 1/72nd scale aircraft that local men flew on or in during WWII. Following up on some gentlemens visits to the school during the year and talking of their experiences led to this group wanting to give back to those heros. Four built B17’s and four built B24’s. It wasn’t long until I had arguments over which was the best and why. These kids took it upon themselves to research the men and aircraft. Having the school libraian as an assistant helps in the research, and puts books in the kids hands, a “by product” of the program.
The last session had the kids hand over their models to the vets. Pretty moving stuff.
For next year, I have been told we may need to move to a bigger building! Forty kids have expressed interest!! I can only hope!!
Good point Glamdring. That’s how I got started in modeling- I started reading books about WWII aircraft. It turned into a love of history and modeling.
Nowadays history in school has become a mission for political correctness. My son started in an Advanced Placement US history class this week. He’s already well read on US- especially WWII- history. So the first thing he did was look what the book had about WWII. The sections were: Women in the War, The Japanese Internment, The Role of African Americans, The Role of Native Americans and finally a chapter on the war in general.
Now I am not arguing against covering the above subjects. We couldn’t have won the war without “Rosie the Riveter” and the contribution women made. As a history and aircraft buff, I have great respect for the Tuskeegee airmeen. All of those subjects should be taught. They are part of our history, and we need to know it- warts and all- to avoid the same mistakes, take pride in our accomplishments, and see that we are stronger together than seperate.
Yet somehow they’ve become the entire context for America’s WWII effort. No mention of D-Day was made, except a passing reference to France being invavded. Names like Marshall, Hulsey, Nimitz and Bradley were missing.
My son switched classes. The Honors history class had a more sane approach to teaching history of WWII- it covered the above subjects, but also talked about technology advances, personalities in the war, major war events, etc.
History has gone from being history to being a political indoctrination for PC thinking.
And how in the heck does model building tie into that?
I saw the same thing in 1988 at Florida State. I signed up for a British history class covering 1820 to 1914. The instructor, female, came in and announced she was covering that time period, but only from the viewpoint of the sexual, feminist and gender issues of that time period. Which wasn’t mentioned in the class description.
Here in Pensacola, modelers (and LHS owners) promote the hobby in several ways:
Local Clubs - We currently have 3 modeling clubs locally and all are open to anyone who wishes to join. There’s a general interest IPMS/USA club, a club dedicated to figure modeling, and an armor club. All three have pretty good membership and receive great support from our local hobby shops.
Local Contests - It seems like there is always at least one annual contest and sometimes two. They always draw in a fairly good “general public” attendance.
Make-N-Take Workshops - About 1 class every two months or so. Usually get around 10 to 15 kids at each one, but the last class had 25!
Modeling Displays - One of our club members puts on a modeling display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation about once per quarter. Gets exposure to “out-of-towners” and locals and really ties modeling to the full-size displays.
Local model club affiliation to other organizations - We’ve developed a close relationship between our modeling club and the Boy Scouts. So much so, that our local annual Boy Scout “Activity Weekend” (not sure what the actual title is) now has a two-day model building seminar as part of their activities.
Other activities - Some of our model club members volunteer their time at things like annual art shows. Here, they will set up a tent in the “Children’s Area” (mostly preschool through maybe 5 or 6 year olds) and have them assembly and paint balsa wood gliders. While these aren’t technically “models”, the introduction of simple assembly and painting skills are a good base for later modeling.
Those are just a few of the ways we promote the hobby locally and it seems to work pretty well at getting new modelers into the hobby.
A quick comment on the “Advanced Make-N-Take” suggestion. We’ve tried to come up with a program like this locally and have discovered (quite quickly) there are a couple major issues…time and volunteers. Most advanced modeling classes really need more than 1 day to be effective and many potential participants won’t commit to multiple days. Likewise, many modelers either can’t or won’t commit to volunteer as instructors for these extended classes. Don’t get me wrong. In a larger city or area with plenty of support, an Advanced Modeling Class is a GREAT idea. We’ve simply found that it’s very difficult to get going in our area.
Finally, all of us can promote the hobby by emphasising to everyone who asks that modeling is FUN…enjoy it!
I completely agree with this idea. I’ve been a WWII buff for as long as I can remember. Books, pictures, articles, anything that had to do with WWII appealed to me. When I discovered models, the wallet only continued to empty from there.
The advanced modeling work shop,for lack of a better term, I have going, lasts all summer long,once a month anywhere from two to three hours. That’s three months and about 10-12 hours of my time. So far it is just myself and the elementary school librarian. I get some funds from the Schools PTO,and some from myself and my assistant. I don’t know who has more fun,us or the kids!!
Kudos to you, Don. Sounds like a nice program that works well for you and the kids. I have 3 Saturdays every month tied up with modeling activities, so I can appreciate the effort.
I agree totaly that they go hand in hand. I love history, anything about the military and its technology I’ll read or watch. I was suprised at school when I found most people prefering to do english, geography and other subjects over history. I’d rather do history than art to be honest, its intresting and usefull.
Let’s not forget that modeling and history do not “have to” go hand-in-hand.
While it is true, military modeling is a dominant sector of the modeling community, there are many modeling genres where history is of little importance. Sci-Fi modelers, many automotive modelers, and even fantasy figure modelers all enjoy their “nitch” in the hobby without necessarily needing an appreciation of history.
I agree that Sci-Fi involves no history, but auto modelers still have a bit of history, with all the different upgrades etc. to the cars they build. Also, Fantasy Figures are often heavily influenced by many ancient civilizations (Romans, Aztecs…) so I think you can relate history with it. You could do with out it, but if you were anything like us military modelers…
I had that same thought go through my head shortly after I made my assertion. I never specified military history though. It could be the history of Middle Earth or the Galactic Empire for all intents and purposes. I wouldn’t even be able to guess the number of kids who were taken to a classic car show and decided to build one the saw there.
I just think it is important to have an appreciation of the past in order to gain a window to the future, and to try avoiding past mistakes. If modeling (of any type) is a by-product of a proper education in history, it’s like killing two birds with one stone for this subject…
My wife and I have been thinking about doing something once we get our shop all setup.
My 12 year old son has been playing baseball and soccer and come to find out, there isn’t much for young kids to do up here except drive parents nuts with PS2’s, Gameboys, XBox’s, etc… So we’ve taked to some parents at the different events and school gatherings and they really like our idea.
We’re thinking about having a hobby night of sorts at the shop. But the kids have to have all there homework done for the week. The parents will buy the kit at a discount, I will supply the paints and brushes. The parents or parent is encouraged to stay and help (quality time). The school and local librarians have offered to do what they can as far as getting reference material for us. We figure it would be an all winter and into the spring project until the freezing cold and snow starts to disappear. My son likes the idea because he has a few friends that are interested but have never built a model and would like to try. They can either leave their projects at the shop so they can dry or risk it by taking them home every week, it’s up to them. I have one other person willing to help teach the kids with the technique’s. Of course we’ll start with simple basics and work right through the process.
I might be biting off more than I can chew, but I’d really like to give it a try. There are just too many kids now days playing those fast paced electronic games. They have difficulty staying focused on things that take time to accomplish. Like when I took my son fishing the other day. He caught a few the first half hour, then they stopped biting. After 40 minutes of no bites or nibbles he was ready to call it a day of fishing. I noticed him and his friends even do that with their electronic games, hit a tough spot, switch to another game.
I think there is more important things to be learned from slowly and carefully building a model than learning history. Learning a piece of history is just an added tid bit bonus.
Well, just my thoughts and what my wife and I are going to try this winter.