Finally, the results from my Beltane community survey are in! And they make interesting reading! Hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
Summary
There were 73 participants, over a period of 5 weeks. These were self-selecting from the membership of the Beltane mailing lists, and some word of mouth.
For ranking questions, participants were asked to rank the items in order of importance. A score was then allocated (just like the Scottish Elections!), where 1st=10 points, 2nd=6, 3rd=4, 4th=3, 5th=2, 6th and below 1 (not selected = 0).
I’ve tried to put a small summary of each question’s results below, though this is purely a personal take on the answers, and might not be a statistically significant representation of the results…
Questions, questions, questions
I’ve included the question in each section below as a reminder. I tried to pick ones that were of interest to me, that I’d heard discussed in the pub, or debated on the mailing lists.
I also tried to phrase them in such a way as to not put any bias or personal leaning into them - though you can never guarantee this when you’re setting your own questions on subjects you have a personal opinion on.
Its likely I’ve missed out groups, parts or options for some questions that people might feel should be there. In most cases you can infer an answer, but if you’re not entirely happy, then why not host your own survey!?
Finally, I’ll just remind everyone again that this was something that interested me, and it isn’t an official Beltane Fire Society survey, and wasn’t designed to try and get a clear direction, or kickstart changes.
Of course, I’m all in favour of people using these answers to give them a better idea of the direction that Beltane should be headed in, be it ritual, performance, production or society overall. Though I’d recommend double-checking the numbers in a more official way!
BFS Events
Rank the following Beltane Fire Society events in order of importance
Perhaps as expected, Beltane Samhuinn come in the top slots. However, there is much more indecision relating to the importance of the other festivals, though quarter days still outrank eighth days.
Parts of Beltane
Rank the following parts of the Beltane Fire Festival in order of importance.
The traditional elements of the ancient Beltane all score highly - Gods and Goddesses, the Neid Fire and the Bonfire, with the modern Beltane performance aspects following.
Beltane Groups
Rank the following Beltane groups in order of importance.[*]
A strong vote for the key roles of May Queen and Green Man, but also support for the less performance, more production oriented roles.
[*] Apologies to Photo and Video point for being missed out here - by the time I realised it was too late to add them in without affecting the results!
Calton Hill
Is it important to keep Beltane on Calton Hill?
This is an age-old debate, and it seems that although there is a majority in favour of keeping it on Calton Hill, it is not as strong a majority as is perhaps believed by the membership as a whole.
Date
Is it important to keep Beltane on April 30th (versus a ‘floating’ date e.g. ‘first Saturday of May’)?
Another recently debated question - the traditional date of Beltane also has a majority in support, though more than a quarter disagree.
Start Time
What time of day should Beltane start?
No-one really wants to get up for an early start on Beltane morning, but there is equal weight behind moving Beltane to starting slightly earlier. in late afternoon or early evening. Whether this would also be accompanied by an earlier finish time, or a longer event, is for a different survey.
Audience Membership
Have you ever been a member of the audience at Beltane?
Interestingly, a quarter of Beltane participants have never been a member of the audience. This might mean that we are sometimes performing to an audience that we don’t fully understand.
Audience Size
What would be the ideal size for the Beltane audience? (pick a number between 0 and 10,000)
Minimum: 200
Maximum: 10000
Average: 7228.77
Std deviation: 3009.5
1st quartile: 5000
Median: 8000
3rd quartile: 10000
This shows that all the respondents feel that having an audience present is important, as no-one opted for no audience. Most participants are happy with a larger audience, though there are some who feel a very small audience size is important.
Ticket Prices
What should a Beltane Fire Festival ticket cost?
Minimum: 0.00
Maximum: 30.00
Average: 6.30
Std deviation: 4.42
1st quartile: 5
Median: 5
3rd quartile: 8.75
Some people think Beltane should be free. Some people think that we’re worth a lot more than we currently ask. However, the stats on these answers shows that most people believe a ticket price in the 5-10 bracket is probably best.
Activity
For how many years have you been actively involved in Beltane Fire Society?
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 20
Average: 6.12
Std deviation: 4.19
1st quartile: 3
Median: 5
3rd quartile: 8.5
Some participants hadn’t yet taken part in Beltane. Others have been going strong for up to 20 years! The stats speak for themselves - most people have been involved between 3-9 years. (As an aside, the sum total of all answers was 447, which is a lot of festivals!)
Beltane Participation
How many Beltane festivals have you been actively involved in?
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 15
Average: 5.19
Std deviation: 3.56
1st quartile: 3
Median: 4
3rd quartile: 7
These numbers compare to the previous question, showing that most BFS members are also active Beltane participants, though the slight reduction in numbers shows that (as expected) not everyone gets involved in everything every year.
Roles
How many different groups or roles have you undertaken in Beltane?
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 9
Average: 2.85
Std deviation: 1.83
1st quartile: 1
Median: 3
3rd quartile: 4
Last Participation
In what year did the last Beltane you were actively involved in take place?
Most participants had been active in Beltane in the last 3 years, with almost no people responding who hadn’t taken part in the last 10 years.
Expectations
How does your experience of recent Beltane Festivals meet with your expectations?
This data was a little hard to decide how to portray it. I’ve opted for a bar chart, which while perhaps not being the most obvious choice, clearly reflects the main finding - that the membership falls into a standard distribution (with a slightly positive bias) in terms of how they experienced Beltane compared with what they expected from it. This implies that we’re not significantly over or under-selling Beltane to its participants.
Bonus Question
‘While I love all aspects of Beltane, deep down in my heart I’ll always think of myself as…‘
This was a bonus, or fun question, just to see what people would say. We had the following broad categories of answers:
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People who didn’t answer.
-
People who associated with a particular group [*]
-
Short answers
-
Long answers
-
I really have no idea…[**]
See the following file for all the answers (slightly tweaked and anonymised, but hopefully without changing any of the meaning).
Bonus Question Answers
[*] Mid-survey I had to tweak things a bit, as I’d overlooked that someone might put 303 letters in the word RED! and make the survey software unhappy :-D
[**] I’m now wondering what a fascist insect might look like though…
