English Chess Forum

Hello all,

I thought it was necessary and indeed an interesting topic to bring up. As a democratic society, do we feel there are enough different ethnic cultures, i.e., race and religions joining chess clubs.

From what indeed I have witnessed alone having joined several clubs in my years "chess clubs", There is a lack of encouragement or any thought in trying to get a more diverse chess community amongst clubs.

What do people feel about this?

Matt.

It seems to me that getting ~anyone new to attend a chess club is a hard enough task in itself, without having to try to particularly aim for different cultures.

Perhaps a good way would be the following:

1.Trying fliers, around the local community.

2. Perhaps Put a chess column in the local newspaper i.e., the Surrey Advertiser.

3. Have Regular coaching from a International master or Grandmaster.

Matt.

And that would help multiculturalism precisely how?

Rob Thompson wrote:And that would help multiculturalism precisely how?

Matt may have thought you changed the topic of the conversation to the more general topic of how to attract any new members. I think general efforts to increase membership is probably the best way to do things. I wonder, though, how much multiculturalism is a regional thing. I know in London there are chess players from many ethnicities and backgrounds, but this might not be same in other areas of the country.

This has already been discussed in the thread "Ethnic Diversity in Chess".

Rob Thompson wrote:It seems to me that getting ~anyone new to attend a chess club is a hard enough task in itself, without having to try to particularly aim for different cultures.

I agree. If the club publicises itself sufficiently, anyone interested will come. I don't subscribe to the school of thought which appears to hold that, if any particular group in society (in this case chess players, in others MPs, Oxbridge students or whoever) does not precisely reflect the demographic profile of the society as a whole in terms of the number of women/homosexuals/members of ethnic or religious minorities/people from socially deprived backgrounds, people with disabilities etc. etc., then that is a major problem signifying that certain groups are under-represented and needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. It might just be that fewer of them are interested.

Chess clubs in East Surrey are quite culturally mixed, representing the community we live in. The more obviously under-represented group is females.

Our club can make the proud claim that its female membership have a 100% record in league matches over the last five years - we were playing a postponed match between our C and D teams at a club night and both teams were a player short so, rather than having to declare the board a double default, we counted the guy and girl who'd happened to turn up for what they'd expected to be friendly games as the board 4 players, and tossed a coin to decide which of them we'd put in which team. No clock, no keeping score, neither of them had played a competitive game before nor were they likely to again - and the girl happened to win, hence the 100% record. Delving further back into the club archives, we've had female captains and committee members, so I'm not sure why there have been so few recently.

Coventry has a large immigrant community and any large university has its fair share of international students, and this is reflected in the membership of both the city and university clubs.