News

There have been a few exciting changes recently in our team of staff members at the Vanguard Centre.

At the end of last year, some new faces joined our team, so we have quite a few instructors for the HEMA classes and archery sessions now. Welcome to Joshua Stocks and Duncan McLaren, along with Paul Durkin coming on board a bit more formally!

This means that Jonathan Spouge, our chief instructor, has a bit more opportunity to take time off to rest and recuperate, without having to cancel classes. There are several people able to run sessions in his absence, making our team much more resilient and able to cover the schedule when something crops up that would previously have caused problems.

However, Sam Lawrie, our venue manager for the last few years, has now moved on to lend her considerable experience and management skills to another business in need of her help. We would like to thank her for her immense contributions over this time – the place would not be the same without her input! Without a doubt, her new colleagues will be glad to have her aboard.

What’s happening at the Vanguard Centre in March?

You won’t see many new events or activities for a little while, because our current focus is squarely on making sure that our regular activities manage to keep running, while improving the physical space in the venue and streamlining a few of our processes behind the scenes.

Like a swan, things will appear visibly calm and serene, while there is a huge amount of activity happening out of sight beneath the surface!

We hope to have some new announcements soon. But in the meantime, keep booking in to come along to do your archery or to play with swords, and we’ll keep improving things in the background. See you soon!

Ahoy, Vanguardians!

Seeing as the festive season is galloping up on us at a pace, we have planned out our opening hours and commitments for the holiday period, listed below:

We will be closed from Wednesday 22nd December 2021 to Tuesday 4th January 2022 inclusive. The centre will be open as normal with all our scheduled activities up to and including Tuesday 21st December 2021. In the New Year we will be reopening for classes on Wednesday the 5th of January 2022.

As advance notice, there may be opportunities for some bookings for private tuition, parties or Vanguard Members to join us on the 28th, 29th and 30th of December.

If you are looking for a private Christmas party booking, the following dates are available: Friday 10th December from 8pm and Friday the 17th from 8pm. We do have some availability in the afternoons running up to Christmas and you can contact us at https://vanguard.academyofhistoricalarts.co.uk/contact/ to arrange a booking.

In the mean time, remember to book into your classes with the relevant booking system, or make inquiries about private tuition or party groups on our website: https://vanguard.academyofhistoricalarts.co.uk/

Hi everyone. We have a large announcement today.

Our blacksmith Paul is heading off to pastures new. We would like to wish him well with his new employment, and we’d also like to thank him for making the forging session such a great experience for everyone who has been in for them over the last few years. The Centre will seem an emptier place without the heat and noise of the forge!

This means that we will no longer be offering blacksmithing sessions at the Vanguard Centre from the 1st of November onwards. The remaining October sessions are now filled, so there are unfortunately no further opportunities to redeem a voucher for blacksmithing.

If you had an outstanding voucher for blacksmithing, we can offer two options:

1. We would be more than happy to put a blacksmithing voucher towards archery or HEMA, whether for attendance at our regular sessions, private tuition, or a private party.
2. Alternatively, we can refund the person who purchased the voucher, if this person sends us a written request through email before the end of December 2021.

Please note that all vouchers issued before the pandemic will expire by the end of December this year 2021, so you will need to contact us by email before this deadline if you would like to do anything with your voucher before it expires.

If you would like to put a voucher towards archery or HEMA, we can extend the expiry date until the end of February 2022 as a goodwill gesture, so that you have a little more time to make your arrangements and book in for something. Just get in touch with us by email and let us know what you would like to do.

(Please note that even if we extend the expiry date until February 2022 for utilising the voucher, the hard deadline for requesting a refund will remain as the 31st of December 2021, this will not change.)

Back in July, we received some funding to deliver a small project to provide subsidised participation in sport, at our HEMA classes in Glasgow.

In partnership with the Triquetra Services (Scotland) charity, the Vanguard Centre received funding from the Arnold Clark Community Fund, enough to subsidise 40 places in our HEMA sessions. These were snapped up quickly, and we continued to offer some additional free sessions to help even more people have a first taste of HEMA.

However, the funding for this project has now run out, and we must return to our usual prices for attending HEMA classes. We hope that if you attended one of our sessions during this time, you enjoyed yourself, and that we will see you again!

If you are interested in getting involved with HEMA, but missed out on this project, we have some other exciting plans in the works. Our intention is to start running some beginners courses soon, giving you a structured introduction to historical swordfighting, and preparing you to join our regular weekly sessions. There will be more announcements about this as we get everything organised.

For now, if you are interested in having a go, please do book into any of our various HEMA classes, turn up, and give it a shot. We will look forward to seeing you soon.

The Vanguard Centre has received some grant funding to help people start attending HEMA classes.

Arnold Clark has been running a Community Fund during the pandemic to provide grant funding to charities and local community groups to run projects that will be helpful to people in the local area. The Vanguard Centre has partnered with Triquetra Services (Scotland) to deliver a small project with assistance from the Community Fund.

As a result, if you have not visited one of our HEMA sessions before, this grant funding will subsidise your first session so that you can attend free of charge! When booking your place through our website, please indicate in the dropdown menu beside the calendar that it is your first session with us, and the discount will be applied automatically.

We hope that this project will make it slightly easier for people to become involved with physical activity via sport. After the long Covid-restrictions in Glasgow, we all need a bit more movement and happiness in our lives, and this is one small thing that we are delighted to be able to offer, to try to help people recover from the long months of enforced inactivity.

Please do share this announcement with any of your friends or colleagues who might be interested in having a go at historical fencing!

(Boring small print: this funding has been earmarked for newcomers, to try to help people become more physically active. If you claim the discount and it is not your first HEMA session with us, we reserve the right to cancel the booking or to chase you up for the correct attendance fee! The grant funding will subsidise a certain number of participants, but we may be able to offer some additional places over and above what the funding covers, to prolong the time for which this project can run.)

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September update: the funding has now finished for this project, so there are no further subsidised places available. You can still book in to attend our HEMA sessions as normal.

I am writing this today with incredible happiness at being able to share the Vanguard Centre’s 5 year anniversary with all of our members and friends.

Five years ago, on Friday the 11th of September 2015, we received our keys to the venue and opened our doors for the very first time. A few hectic days later, after moving everything out of our storage unit and into the venue, and after countless hours of trying to impose some kind of order on the new place, we ran our very first session: a Thursday-evening longsword session!

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The New Year is well under way and we are back into our routine here at the centre. All the usual archery, sword fighting and blacksmithing goings on as well as private tuition and party bookings. Read on to see what is happening at the Vanguard in February.

Archery

Archery is still one of our most popular activities here at the centre. We have regular scheduled sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. All sessions provide full instruction for anyone new to the sport, as well as all the equipment needed. There are a maximum of 10 spaces available at each 90 minute session. We have a good mix of archers from young and old, complete newbies and seasoned archers.

Get yourself booked in to one of our sessions through our online booking system. You can book your slot here.

Blacksmithing

As always, Paul the blacksmith is available to teach you how to manipulate metal into something different. We have a variety of different forging workshops available. Take a look here to see which of out forging sessions you would like to do. If you would like to book a session, you can contact us to arrange a date that suits your schedule.

We will be adding some new forging workshops soon, so keep your eyes peeled to see what Paul has in store for you all.

Scottish Fighting Arts

The Scottish Fighting Arts classes at 8 o’Clock on Tuesday nights takes a different weapon for study each month, and in March we have chosen to explore the sword and buckler.

This flexible combination of one handed straight sword and small shield (typically between 15cm and 30cm) was commonly used for self defence and dueling in the medieval period and beyond, and was known to be popular with the aristocracy of Scotland after an education on the continent.

The buckler was also a common sight in the raiding parties of the border reivers in the 17th and 18th centuries. In these sessions we will be learning the medieval German method shown in manuscript known as 1.33 or Tower Fechtbuch, which shares a lot of concepts with later German fighting traditions, but with some changes in tactics to make use of the shield, and some very fancy footwork! Scottish Fighting Arts (buckler), Tuesday nights in February, at 8.00pm!

HEMA Classes

We have a variety of different HEMA classes happening throughout the week. Tuesdays at 6pm, start off with an Introduction to HEMA class. This is a free class, so just come along and find out if HEMA is for you! All equipment is provided, just wear something comfortable such as a t-shirt, jogging bottoms and trainers and our instructor will give you your first taste of historical European martial arts.

8pm on Tuesdays we have out Scottish Fighting Arts class. This class covers various different weapons systems and changes from month to month.

Wednesdays we have our broadsword sabre class at 8pm and Thursdays we have our German longsword class at 6pm. All of our HEMA classes work on a drop in basis, so no need to book, just turn up and learn some awesome sword fighting!

You can find more information on HEMA classes here.

Private tuition and group bookings

Throughout the week, we have availability for private tuition and group/party bookings. Monday to Friday from noon until 5pm, Jonathan is available for archery or HEMA lessons, either one to one, or perhaps you and a few friends fancy coming along to try shooting or swords? If you are interested in arranging a lesson the get in touch!

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It’s getting a bit frosty out there! Time to come to the Vanguard Centre and do some archery, blacksmithing or HEMA. No matter what the weather, we are here for classes, cups of tea and plenty of banter. Keep reading to find out what’s on at The Vanguard Centre in November.

Scottish Fighting Arts

Medieval Street Fighting in Scottish Fighting Arts classes

After the runaway success of the street fighting in August, we are bringing multi-man team fighting back for November! Rather than looking at the sources or techniques of one particular weapon, we will instead be practising fighting in a very different environment.

In historical context, fighting was only rarely one-on-one duelling, more often committed in gangs or small units of combatants beyond the battlefield or even in civilian streets, so for a bit of fun in November we will be trying to recreate the feeling and the fury of armed self-defence and turf warfare of the 14th and 15th centuries.

These lessons will be less strict about individual performance and mechanics, although those will always be helpful and will be coached as necessary, and the classes will instead look at the tactics and method of fighting groups – there are considerations of movement, footwork and angles of attack that are more or less helpful in a multi-directional fight, and better or worse still in a confined space! Learn how to cover or rescue your friends in a brawl, stand alone against multiple foes, fight back to back when surrounded by your enemies, and the most useful of all, how to do the bare minimum to run away!

These classes will make use of common weapons of the period such as single sword or messer (fighting knife), sword and buckler, and the two-handed longsword. Anyone with at least some experience in these systems is welcome to give them a try in these stressful group situations.

We will also take the opportunity to practise some rarer forms of engagement like escort duty, bodyguarding, snatch-and-grab a prize, and the famous tavern brawl… Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing, Domination, Capture The Flag, Juggernaut, and other game modes available!

Medieval Street Fighting will be hosted on Tuesday nights through November at 8.00pm.

Blacksmithing

Fancy making your loved ones some hand forged gifts for Christmas? Then why not book in to one of our forging sessions this November.

Our blacksmith, Paul, will be here at the Vanguard forge with hammer in hand to teach you how! We have a range of pendant forging sessions available, fire pokers, toasting forks and fire strikers also make great gifts. We also have gift vouchers available for forging sessions if you have a friend or family member that fancies forging their own!

Get in touch to arrange a session or gift voucher.

Archery

Archery classes have been busy!

We love having you all along to theses sessions and with 7 sessions available throughout the week, you have ample time to come for some target practice. Whether you are a complete beginner or a seasoned archer, we have plenty of range time for you. All the kit you need to get started is right here at The Vanguard Centre, so if you are an aspiring toxophilite, book yourself into one of our archery sessions here.

Christmas parties at The Vanguard Centre

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Our diary is now open for Christmas party bookings! If you fancy some archery or sword fighting before you hit the pub, get in touch and get booked in.