- last updated: March 2016
- contact: affordability@wiscon.net
WisCon believes in making our convention a space for everyone, including those for whom attending conventions may be financially difficult or impossible. Over the years, WisCon has worked to weave together a variety of policies and practices designed to help lower economic barriers to attending and participating in WisCon, as well as making the convention overall more affordable for all members.
WisCon’s long-standing commitment to our Con Suite — which serves all attendees with healthy, easy to access meals — and to providing low-cost at-con Childcare are spaces at WisCon which contribute to this goal. WisCon also encourages and works to facilitate room and ride sharing among convention attendees, and provides a limited number of discounted room rates.
The WisCon Member Assistance Fund helps members who need a bit of a boost to attend and enjoy Wiscon. The WMAF awards attendees amounts ranging from $50 to $500 to assist with covering travel or hotel expenses. Members can be nominated by other members, or nominate themselves; this effort is generously funded by SF3 and our donating members.
WisCon aims to encourage a conversation that includes a diversity of voices from a wide variety of backgrounds. Class background and socio-economic status are two factors that impact the ways in which we see both our own world and the speculative fiction universes we’ve come to WisCon to discuss. They can act as frames for envisioning possible futures, other worlds, and negotiating the building and growth of our ideals. By lowering the financial barriers to attending WisCon, we open the doors to include more people in this conversation which strengthens and deepens the discussion.
WisCon works in concert on these issues with Friends of Dennis, a grassroots fan project dedicated to fostering discussions of class and classism from within a speculative literature framework. We are working together to find ways to make attending WisCon more affordable, and to make sure that con-goers are aware of the options available to help them meet their budgets.
We welcome your ideas about how we might achieve this goal. Got a good one? Contact us at the email above and let us know!