Why We Need Guilds Today

How Medieval Mutual Aid Inspired A Modern Media Movement

Modern society tends to romanticize the Middle Ages. We tell exciting stories of kings and queens, knights and knaves, honor and adventure. In reality, very few things about that time period would be welcome in our modern lives. No one wants to go back to a time before penicillin, or air conditioning, or UberEats.

That said, I believe there is one thing from the Middle Ages we are missing out on. Our corporate landscape has relegated craftspeople to the realm of “blue collar jobs” and now is threatening the heart of our creative industries with new technology and artificial intelligence, and people who are good at making things are often rendered invisible.

Fortunately, we can learn from the past. Skilled craftspeople and creators have faced this situation before, dealt a losing hand in a convenience-based economy. From ancient Rome and through the Middle Ages, to respond, craftspeople have self-organized into guilds. Guild members have banded together to fight for the dignity, value, and importance of their craft, and to provide support and training for their members.It is my belief that we as a society need guilds to make a comeback.

Media Alchemy Guild (MAG) is our attempt at evoking the spirit of the old guilds in a way that speaks to the modern economic climate and our place as skilled craftspeople. We exist to allow skilled people with integrity to band together to provide high quality services for clients and support for each other. We exist to keep the humanity, care, and quality in our work.

But before we talk more about MAG and our approach to our work, please follow me on a brief historical excursion to the last time the guilds were needed:

In a 2013 paper for the National Council of Social Studies, William Bosshardt and Jane S. Lopus describe guilds as “associations of craftspeople and merchants formed to promote the economic interests of their members as well as to provide protection and mutual aid.”

Were you a baker, a silk dyer, a hatter, a stone mason, or a blacksmith? You’d be best off if you joined your local guild.

Some of the benefits of belonging to a guild included access to trainings and apprenticeships, a better shot at employment, a set standard for the quality of goods and services provided, and a community that could care for each other and collectively influence the market.

On a more practical level, a guild provided physical protection from highway robbery to its members by traveling in groups, and the collective finances paid for things like guild members’ doweries and funerals.

During the Black Death in the fourteenth century, for example, guilds became what Bosshardt and Lopus call “extended families” for Plague survivors. They chipped in to cover burial expenses and helped provide for the families of guild members who died.

These benefits were so valued that the freedom to form guilds was often considered an essential right in England.

The impact of those medieval guilds on how we live today cannot be overstated. The first universitum magistrorum et scholarium (guilds of masters and scholars) began in Bologna, Notre Dame, and Oxford in the twelfth century. These became the first universities.

Meanwhile, according to historian Mark Cartwright, the increased power of the middle-class craftspeople and merchants in local government slowly but surely grabbed power away from the ruling aristocracy, effectively changing the entire structure of economic power in Europe and bringing about the end of feudalism.

So why aren’t guilds around much anymore?

Like all methods of organization, guilds as institutions had their downsides. And those downsides would mean they got left behind by the march of progress.

For one thing, they were very exclusionary. Not only did guilds pretty much unilaterally exclude women, they increasingly relied on hereditary membership. If you were not related to a guild member, you couldn’t get in.

In his incredible book Bullshit Jobs, archeologist and scholar David Graeber points out that the masters stopped graduating younger journeymen into their senior ranks, effectively chilling them out of the industry altogether and prompting them to strike out on their own, leaving their guilds behind.

Meanwhile, James Suzman writes in Work: A Deep History that during the industrial revolution, what remained of guilds were increasingly suspicious of new technology that would render their members obsolete, and so quickly fell on the wrong side of progress.

Finally, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, many countries in Europe decreed the abolition of craft associations entirely.

What can we learn from this? And how is it applicable not just to our own Media Alchemy Guild but to the position we find ourselves in today as creatives and craftspeople?

First, we can look at guilds as powerful counters to the current economic system.

It is my personal belief that the most impactful thing you can do when a system fails you is build a functional alternative. For us at Media Alchemy Guild, our former employer failed us, as did the system we were suddenly expected to navigate without income or insurance. We also witnessed the authors we cared about lose to this same system, having spent money and time they may never recoup.

This guild is one way we are taking our agency back, building a system that works for us while avoiding the pitfalls of other forms of organization. There is no CEO, no contracts, no ownership or gatekeeping services behind user payments.

No one works “for” MAG or “with” MAG. We are MAG. This goes for the experts and industry leaders offering services on our website as well as the folks who choose to work with us.

Second, guilds can offer a way for skilled craftspeople to combat the influx of AI into our industries.

At a recent PubWest roundtable event on the topic of AI in Publishing, industry experts expressed concern about the legal and ethical implications of incorporating artificial intelligence into their processes. They also were concerned about what access to this currently free technology would do for the job prospects of writers, editors, graphic designers, and marketing managers.

Without succumbing to the rigidity towards technology that doomed the guilds of the sixteenth century, we need to be realistic about what the role of AI is doing to the content creation and publishing industry.

AI is useful and should be utilized. But for those who care about quality, about standing out from the crowd, and about creating something that lasts, it cannot be a substitute for human creativity. It is average by design.

Guilds, instead, can create a place to look for collaborators who are exceptionally skilled at what they do and are thoroughly vetted by other industry leaders. Part of the reason we created MAG is to get straight to the heart of this desire: to connect with other humans and make beautiful things to be consumed by humans.

Finally, we can see the value of guild benefits to skilled craftspeople today.

I’ll tell you something cool. Within an hour of being laid off, most of our former colleagues found new ways to congregate and support each other. We immediately began sharing professional recommendations, job postings, guidance for filing for unemployment insurance, networking connections, and lots and lots of emotional support.

I could not have gotten through this last few months without the amazing people who supported me and allowed me to support them. We certainly wouldn’t have been able to come together to create this guild without that ongoing support.

When creating MAG, I invested a lot of time and money into getting it up and running. It was a passion project and a gift, so I didn’t think to ask to be paid back.

However, within two days of launching, I had been almost completely reimbursed because the people on this call asked to give back in return. And since then, in just one month:

• The Media Alchemy Guild website was taken over the finish line and polished by the amazing Jessica Smith and Teresa Miller
• This blog, The MAG Lab, has been spearheaded by the expert writers and editors Alex Hughes Capell and Madison Fitzpatrick
• Our virtual launch party benefited from the industry knowledge of Rose Friel, Adam Korenman, Olivia Hammerman, Lisa Shiroff, and Karen Rowe by way of keynotes and workshops
• Our committee, an open, rotating, and volunteer-based gathering of MAG members to discuss broad guild issues, is full of passionate people currently including Miriam Drennan, Lisa Shiroff, Leslie Hinson, Alex Hughes Capell, and myself.

This whole project has been an exercise in mutual aid and shared resources, even in dire straits. If nothing else, being a part of this guild has proven to me that we are stronger together, and that collective action will save us.

So, where does that leave us?

It leaves us, here. Here, together, as a guild. Hopefully setting an example for other similar groups of passionate experts who want nothing more than to go forth and do great work. I am so excited to see what comes next.

Vi La Bianca (they/them) is the founder of Media Alchemy Guild. They are a Publishing Operations Consultant and Certified ScrumMaster with a background in traditional, hybrid, professional, and SEO publishing. They help publishers scale sustainably, operate efficiently, and elevate their offerings during growth phases and restructures.

With degrees in Journalism and Publishing and 10 years as an editor and book positioner, Vi has been helping authors publish their books since 2016. They have experience in content marketing and hybrid publishing as Head of Content and Content Operations Manager, and currently work as a Publishing Editor at Sage Publications.

Learn more about Vi by visiting their LinkedIn profile.

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