Why Growth is Important in Cardistry
By Haider Ahmad
Inhibiting Growth
For many years there has been a discussion about keeping cardistry in a bubble, and I myself used to feel the same way. Members believe that a larger number of cardists would result in a worse experience for everyone. Some things I have heard is that cardistry would lose its community aspect if there are too many people, cardistry would lose its culture, it would be hard to stand out creatively, hard to keep track of who has created what and of course it is cool to be exclusive. The more I have thought about it the more I have realized that we are holding ourselves back from a greater experience.
A large community does not mean that the community has to be worse. A natural progression of sub communities would develop, and if you truly think about it, we already do this. We are not close with every single cardist and are all in little groups. I do acknowledge the doors are wide open to talk to even the biggest cardists. In a larger community you will lose this, but gain so many more people to appreciate your work, and work with you. Beginners will be able to support each other in learning new moves and the advanced will be able to support each other in creating, plus they will have access to so many more benefits than before with many looking up to them.
If you look at other art forms, they do not end up losing their culture simply because of an excess of people. In fact it is strengthened if more people believe in the vision that you do. I say let it be a natural progression and don’t conform to an identity of the cardistry culture you do not agree with. Cardists before us tried to have the cleanest fastest performances of classic moves, while presently we have all sorts of styles with a focus on creativity over performance. Even now we go in and out of phases of enjoying “banger” moves as it can take away attention from other genres of cardistry. A larger community would always have someone to appreciate any style or genre, maybe it will be even easier to find your people!
When it comes to creativity and exclusivity and how it could all be tracked, we may have already breached this point. I think it is not realistic to try and keep track of every single move created and associate it with a specific person every time. I agree that it's a sad reality, but this means that only very specific moves can stand out as yours if a larger community is to form. I will acknowledge that this is already taking effect as I will find new cardists I have never heard about to this day who have been at it for years at this point. The point being is that things might be more biased towards you being a popular cardist rather than being the first to develop an idea. At this point it is all a prediction based on how music, or dance is created and distributed, All the most favored moves will still be filtered up to relevancy, some people may create similar ideas, but the ideologies, and slight hints of yourself are still present in your moves, which makes it special and unique to you.
Funding
Our companies often stay inactive throughout the year and operate based on the dependance of too few loyal people. This makes the companies very unreliable as they only have so much demand. With a greater size in the community, we will have year-round activity in our companies with more possible projects of all types. With more people, more competing brands can also rise which may align with your tastes more than what we have now. Brands would be less based on hype or timing but genuine developments in design and vision.
Not only will the companies run year-round, but our cardists too. A bigger population of cardists is what we all dream for when it comes to jamming in person, or just over your preferred platform. On top of that the biggest cardists will be given more freedom to produce their own content with monetized video or new markets that have yet to be discovered. The cardistry economy should be a huge motivator to grow our community for fueling year-round activity.
Fun
A lot of our time in cardistry is after the hardest part of the journey, which we forget about fairly quickly. Many people struggle to even hold a deck of cards, yet we are constantly creating new moves and pushing the boundaries for what is possible. In 2016 when I first had a good idea of what cardistry was I observed how differently the community operated. Many people simply posted their performances of other peoples moves just for fun, and even had their performances cheered on by other cardists. I relive this now by posting to other social media pages to generate a similar effect for laymen; many people have a natural curiosity and appreciation for dexterity, and how far you can really take a deck of cards. Many of them even write to me now asking to learn more and it is some of the most fun I have had in a while talking about and performing cardistry. All that time spent learning peoples moves isn’t only to reap your own creativity from it, but to present again and show off what we have taken time to work on, feeling proud to even do something at this level and appreciate others' work.
All of this may be the most positive way to look at the future of cardistry if we pursue more growth, but it is truly what I believe and seems obvious when looking at other hobbies. Growing a community takes a lot of work, but if there are misconceptions about where that growth will take us then we will be hitting a wall. Despite any of that there are many people in the world deserving of such a cool hobby and community. I couldn’t imagine what I would have been like without this experience in my life, and I think a lot of us feel similarly. Extending our hands out to a new generation is something we owe to both the people that originally brought us into the art and to all the people putting in the work to keep it alive.
