FAQ
The following are the most frequent basic questions people ask us.
Q: Who are you?
A: Capturing History and We Reenact is created by two sisters in their late twenties, who have degrees in Visual Communications — Graphic Design & Web Design. Since 2001 the sisters have traveled up and down the eastern coast of the USA exploring historic landmarks and battlefields. They’ve photographed and written summaries of their experiences with reenacting in an online journal.
Q: How did you get involve with Living History?
A: We got involved by accident. We spent a large portion of our early adulthood (18 – 25) going up to Gettysburg with a group of friends for several weekends each year. We met some reenactors during the course of these weekends. This started the interest in to wanting to learn more about our area and its history and explore the world of reenacting. Since then we’ve spent most of our summer vacations going to battlefields and living history events.
Q What do you do?
A: Currently we are exploring reenacting & living history through our travels but hope to join a living history unit in the future.
We do a bit of photography, graphic design & occasionally create websites for non-profits in Southern Maryland area.
Q: What got you started in creating a living history website/blog?
A: We were assigned to do a project where we were to connect with other people outside the classroom and create a website that allowed people to interact with it. The project was one of our final projects we did for a web designing course we were taking in College. The project ended up continuing even after graduating from college as finding employment became more difficult. The project was assigned sometime in November 2007 and has been expanding into a much larger project to connect individuals, museums and living history interpreters.
Q: How often do you go to reenacting/living history events?
A: If we were to join a unit we would hopefully be going to an event every month but since we currently are looking for a new unit(s) to join; we are lucky to go to at least five events each year.
Q: How do I find a group near me?
A: You can do it the hard way by going to a reenactment near you and hope that a unit around your area will be there or you can visit Wereenact.net where you can find all units listed by time period and state(country).
Q: Does reenacting require any schooling?
A: Even though schooling isn’t required you should know your history about the time period and the unit you’re joining. The best type of research you can do is reading journals written by soldiers and citizens of the time period you’re interested in. If you can’t find anything that was written during the time period than the second best thing is read are secondary resources that are written by historians. They can at least give you the current knowledge on the time period, battle, and daily lives of the people.
Q: Do you get paid for being a reenacting?
A: No you don’t. It is more likely that you will be paying to go to an event than someone paying you to do an event. If you want to get some payment there are a few living history museums who will pay 18th Century reenactors. There are also few opportunities for reenactors to participate in films but those are rare chances but they do happen. You have to be at the right place and the right time.
Q: Is reenacting a year around activity?
A: It can be. Most frequently the 18th Century season doesn’t start til about February and end til Octoberish, and the American Civil War season starts roughly in March til December. Depending on what time period you do they start during different months. To do this hobby all year-round you can join more than one group or reenact more than one time period. Depending on how often you want to do this hobby is your decision.
If you have any more questions please post them here and we will try to answer them as soon as we can. For more New Recruit information please visit the “New Recruit section of this blog.
~ Thank you to all those who shared their advice with me so that I could forward it to others. Good Luck! ~WeReenact.net
