:: What’s been happening in the world of judging? ::

Report by Pete Lippiatt – WGUK Judging Co-Ordinator

As guards are all in full swing getting productions ready for the 2023 season the judges are no different!

Our version of the training & basics program kicked off with a series of online sessions hosted by WGI judges & Educators covering a range of topics.

– 16 November (William Chumley) – we looked at the skills and design choices in the lower classes & how to verbalise the challenges we see at this lower level. We often spend a lot of time talking about the high end groups but the majority of our units are in the lower classes so this is very important for us.

– 22 November (Adam Sage) – we looked at Production Value and how this impacts on all captions. It’s important for us to look across the whole system of judging and raise awareness as this helps us to understand better how all the aspects come together. One of the key points we always try to reiterate is that no single caption is more important than any other. Our judging system is a combination of all captions and is designed to determine an overall winner.

– 4 December (Travis Wingate & Sam Gervaise) – we focused on the top scoring part of our ‘boxes’ with a reminder to dig deeper into evaluating vocabulary, repertoire & composition. This was a great interactive session and helped us all look at things differently whilst maintaining our emphasis on the points of comparison and the associated criteria descriptions.

We’ve just held a full weekend of all things judging with the team. It was great to be back together and we were joined in person by Edwin Beens and virtually with William Chumley. It’s always great to spend time together as team and we had some great discussions around the scoring range guards and class expectations for 2023. (Look out for these as part of the System Awareness call on Thursday 15 December). We also did some practice and evaluation of our own performances as judges. This always proves interesting and helps us all to develop and grow as judges. We also have further activities (homework!) to complete ahead of the season starting.

Our next formal training event will be the day before the first show in Stoke. As well as ensuring we are all ready for the first show we will be joined by Adam Sage. Adam will be putting us through our paces to make sure we, like the units, come out on top form. Adam will also be joining the team to judge at the first show.

As you can see a lot happens behind the scenes to get us ready. As a judging team we are super excited to see what the units have been working on and can’t wait for the first show!

We’d like to wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and we’ll see you all raring to go in Stoke!