October at the Vanguard Centre

One of our favourite times of the year is here! October at the Vanguard Centre has more archery sessions, all kinds of HEMA classes and of course, our forge will be open for making yourself some metal items perfect for those evenings around the fire pit! Keep reading for a full list of autumn activities at the centre.  

Halloween Pumpkin Shoot

Halloween just happens to fall on one of our regular Thursday evening archery sessions. We will be having our usually archery with the addition of some pumpkin shooting! Come along and help us squash the pumpkin fiends! Fancy dress not essential but feel free to come along dressed for the occasion. You can book your session for our pumpkin shoot here.

Community Outreach

At the Vanguard Centre, we take pleasure in doing community outreach. We work with a variety of charities and not-for-profit organisations to help them deliver their services in Glasgow.

However, our instructors and staff members also engage in outreach within the HEMA community, both in the UK and further abroad. Instructor and admin-in-chief Keith Farrell has been teaching quite a lot over the last two months, at events throughout the UK, in Poland and Italy, and as far afield as Singapore! He always makes sure to mention that the Vanguard Centre exists in Glasgow, and it never fails to elicit various shades of envy at the idea of a full-time training centre.

Now that Keith is back in the UK for a couple of months, expect to see an increased pace of updates and upgrades both to the website and to the Centre in general.

Scottish Fighting Arts – Dagger, Dirk & Knife

Our 8.00pm Tuesday night Scottish Fighting Arts classes in October will feature the fighting knives, daggers and dirks used as back-up side arms and last-resort weapons common throughout martial arts history. Thinking up close and personal, these weapons encourage a literally hands-on approach, with a combination of wrestling and unarmed fighting techniques complimenting and assisting the shorter weapon. This mindset is necessarily flexible, as you have think quickly and swap hands and positions quickly as the engagement changes; there’s little difference in being right or left handed, and reach and distance management becomes even more important!

We will be using a combination of sources to start a basic appreciation of slicing knives and stabbing daggers, from medieval German fechtschule manuals to modern military bayonet and combat knife training. For the next few weeks, we will play with both cuts and thrusts, dodges, blocks and grappling as well as coaching the body mechanics to make them all effective, and above all, as “safe” as possible. Nobody wins a knife-fight, but if you are good you can survive one!

Scottish Fighting Arts takes place on Tuesday nights, starting at 8.00pm.

October Break

October break is in a few weeks time! We will be running additional archery sessions through this holiday break so keep your eyes peeled for dates and times on our social media pages. You can also check for archery sessions on our online booking system here.

Pricing

We have made a new pricing list on our website to make it easier for you to view costs of private bookings, parties, blacksmithing and our regular scheduled classes. You can view this here.

If you are looking to book a Vanguard Centre event and would like more information on what we have to offer for group bookings and private events, then why not contact us or pop by the centre for a chat about your planned event.