Shining Hearth is a free online gathering of Elves, Fae, Sidhe, and adjacent folk. Our fifth annual event will be held on March 21-23, 2025, the fourth weekend in March, on our Discord server. (If you are unfamiliar with Discord, we have a guide for newcomers here: https://www.shininghearth.net/Discord_Guide.pdf)
We have workshops and discussions, games and watch parties, music, and of course plenty of time just to hang out and chat. You can get all the details and sign up for our newsletter on our website.
The event and server are 18+ only. FAQ with more information about our policies here.
Important dates:
Presenter sign-ups: November 8, 2024 – January 10, 2025 — Late sign-ups have been extended through February 7th
General registration: January 1 – March 20, 2025
Staff sign-ups: January 31 – February 28, 2025
Schedule posted: mid-February 2025
The gathering: March 21-23, 2025
This year’s Shining Hearth wrapped up two weeks ago, so it’s time for our post-event summary.
This was a bit of a crazy year! 86 people attended, which is over 1.5x last year, and closing on triple our first year (2021). Most surprising to us was that many new registrations said they had heard about the event on Tumblr, despite the fact that we have never made outreach posts there, so word must have gotten around in a more organic way. Other than the Opening Ceremonies, the most-attended presentation reached 45 people, which is also more than 1.5x the largest from last year, and a big enough leap that we need to start thinking about how to accomodate larger crowds in the future!
We will put up some more detailed information from our anonymous demographic survey on the website eventually, but briefly:
We had mostly fae and elves, but there were also significant numbers of therians and dragons.
Median age of those attending was about 30.
Most were from North America, but about a fifth were from Europe, and a few of us were from Australia/Aotearoa and South or Central America.
This year we tried to expand our schedule for the benefit of those in Europe and Australasia. We had limited success, but did manage to have two movie/game sessions and one workshop placed in the afternoon European time. The schedule is entirely dependent on who volunteers to present or stream, so hopefully we will get some more takers from those areas of the world next year!
Our event dates next year will be Friday, March 27th through Sunday, March 29th, 2026. If you joined the server this year and would like to attend next year, you won’t need to register again; just stay a member, and you’ll be able to check in again next March. Announcements about next year’s event will begin in October.
Be well, everyone, and you will hear from us again in about six months!
Registration for Shining Hearth closes today! Register to attend here.
General registration for Shining Hearth will close in just 5 days, on March 20th. For information including our policies and this year’s schedule, check out our website.
Register here to attend the gathering!
Staff sign-ups for Shining Hearth are closing today. We’re pretty well supplied with staff this year, but if you wish to be considered as a backup in case someone drops out in the next couple of weeks, you can apply here.
There’s now a little less than 3 weeks to go for general registration for the gathering — closing March 20th! Register to attend here.
The schedule for this year’s Shining Hearth has been posted to the website! This page now shows dates and times in your local time, so hopefully there will not be much confusion over when something is taking place.
Staff moderator signups are still open through February 28th. Because we are using one of the UK/Europe timeslots (Saturday 15:30-16:30 CET/UTC+1), although we think we can handle it if necessary with our staff based in the US, it would be nice to get a staff member who is based in that part of the world. Sign up here.
General registration continues to be open through March 20. Register to attend here.
We are still also seeking someone who would be able to stream a movie or similar content at some point on Saturday or Sunday between 10:00 and 22:00 CET, since our other movie slots are not accessible for people in that area. If you’re interested in doing that, email staff (at) shininghearth (dot) net.
Sign-ups to be Staff at Shining Hearth are now open! Our Staff moderators watch chat on the server to make sure everyone is abiding by our Code of Conduct, deal with any conflicts that may arise, and may be asked to assist with Presenter check-ins. Applications will be accepted through February 28th. Sign up to be staff here: https://forms.gle/ucHf17sHeRhXPCy8A
Late Presenter sign-ups will be accepted for one more week, through February 7th. There is still plenty of space in the Europe/UK and Australia/Asia blocks. The Americas block is tentatively full at this time, but we accept applications as backups in case someone has to cancel between now and March. Sign up to present here: https://forms.gle/1Xu2guRYc3kWfRt6A
General registration is still open through March 20th. Register to attend here: https://forms.gle/71K1Yp9DnGT4tUcUA
We are also seeking someone who can stream a movie (or similar content) or host a free-to-play game between approximately 10:00 and 22:00 UK/European time on Saturday 22 March and/or Sunday 23 March. If you have something you can offer, please fill out the Presenter form and indicate this is what you are interested in doing in the place where it asks you to describe your presentation; or email staff (at) shininghearth (dot) net.