UPDATE: ELECTION RESULTS:

The 2010-2011 Governing Council of the HEMA Alliance:

Mike Cartier
Michael Edelson
John Harmston
Jonathan Mayshar
Jake Norwood
Steven Reich
Jason Taylor

Thanks again to all voters, and to the vote counters, who will be keeping separate election archives.

The first meeting of the first elected Governing Council is this Monday, 7/12/2010, at 7 PM Pacific Time. All Members of the HEMA Alliance are welcome. To attend, get a Skype ID and email that ID to secretary@hemaalliance.com.

UPDATE:  Elections are over.  Results will be posted shortly.  Thank you to all who voted.

Voting has begun!  Please go here for election information and voting instructions.

Oh Happy Day!

Given the definitions and conditions contained in the policy we chose with Francis L. Dean & Associates, our options were to overlay a complex set of rules on top of our affiliation and membership system, or to overhaul our system so that it would work seamlessly with our insurance.  We chose the latter, so whether you are a new, old, or prospective member, please read our new Individual Membership and Affiliation policies.

And just to be completely clear for the literal-minded out there: no, we will not submit an insurance claim for you if your fundament is perforated by a spiked peasant flail while wearing a Cirque du Soleil costume.

Two new articles have recently been added to the Articles Section, one on artifacts in freeplay by Michael Edelson, and one on Dobringer’s longsword “flourish.”

We would love to have your article submissions as well.  We do not require any sort of exclusive publishing rights; in fact, you can revoke your permission for us to publish should you later have another publishing opportunity that requires exclusivity.  If your article is already up on your group’s website, that’s fine too.  We would be happy to help increase awareness of your HEMA activities.

Martial articles may be submitted to curriculumcouncil@hemaalliance.com.  Articles on club and organization issues may be submitted to governingcouncil@hemaalliance.com.

This year’s Irish Fighting Arts Days will be mostly a set of announcements to gather interest and contributors to make Irish Fighting Arts Days 2011 a major event.  Maxime Chouinard will be our coordinator for this project, so please contact him at maxime.chouinard@hemaalliance.com if you have an Irish fighting arts link, article, question, or if you just want to let Maxime know that your group is prepared to put down your swords and pick up shillelaghs once in a while.

We’ll have a set of Irish fighting arts links posted later in the week, as well as information on Maxime’s upcoming webinar on bataireacht (traditional Irish stick fighting).  And please visit the Irish Fighting Arts thread on our forum!

Download the flyer here:

http://www.hemaalliance.com/documents/2010Gathering.pdf

Some of the best HEMA practitioners and scholars in the world will be there.  Whether you’ve been in HEMA for 15 days or 15 years, these are 3 days you don’t want to miss!

Wiktenauer is a project begun by Ben Michels of Maryland Kunst Des Fechtens, and The HEMA Alliance is pleased to make this a priority project. Wiktenauer is currently housed here:
http://wiktenauer.com

Like all HEMA Alliance learning resources, Wiktenauer belongs to the community and requires community input. Please contact Ben at Ben.Michels@hemaalliance.com to help.

For those who may not be familiar with wikis, they are a platform for multiple editor collaboration, but not all Wiktenauer material will be available for editing. If you want to lend a final-draft research paper to the Wiktenauer collection, that’s fine too, and we appreciate it. Again, contact Ben.Michels@hemaalliance.com.

It should be noted that while we fully support the vast educational potential of Wiktenauer, we realize that a wiki is not the best solution for every form of media and research. Wiktenauer will ultimately be integrated with HEMAD, the HEMA Database.

Below is the beginning of Ben’s introduction to Wiktenauer.  Discuss Wiktenauer with us here.

The Wiktenauer is, in its pure form, a HEMA information dump. Every technique mentioned in the manuals does or will have a page. Every page will eventually show all of the text from the manuals, including pictures, transcription and translation that is relevant to that technique. Basically, one should be able to view a technique of their choice and view all of the source information in one place.

Visit Wiktenauer for more!
http://wiktenauer.com

Beginning the week before Valentine’s Day each year the theme will be women and couples in Historical European Martial Arts.  The hottie on the upper right of our theme header image is Walpurgis, from manuscript I.33, the oldest known surviving manual of European swordsmanship.  Walpurgis could kick Xena’s hiney with time left over to teach Red Sonja how to hold a sword.

So now’s the time to try again to get your wife or girlfriend to come to practice.  And if you’re already a woman warrior, please get on to our forum and let us know what it’s like for you, and how we can make these arts more welcoming and interesting for students with redundant x-chromosomes.

(And yes, the woman in the rightmost judicial duel picture is grabbing what you think she is grabbing.  It says so in Early New High German.)

…love is in the air…everywhere you look around…

The number of clubs and martial artists devoted to studying and training in Historical European Martial Arts has grown considerably in the past decade. Although the number of HEMA practitioners worldwide was recently estimated at five or six thousand, there has been comparatively little progress in creating a real community beyond Internet forums and a handful of modest events. But there is a community; each of us is part of it. And though there are as many approaches, disciplines, and specializations within HEMA as there are scattered clubs, we all share one thing: a passion for our art.

The purpose of this organization, the HEMA Alliance, is to facilitate the growth of that community by providing it with tools, services, and communally accepted standards. We want to see clubs grow, multiply, and improve. We want to see HEMA gain traction, legitimacy, and increased public respect worldwide through education, training, and collaboration.

The Alliance is a registered educational not-for-profit corporation run by committees of volunteers, with a Governing Council that will be elected by members from throughout the HEMA community.

The Alliance is not a “super-club” of any sort, nor is it an attempt at an inter-organizational government. Membership in the Alliance doesn’t preclude membership in any other club or organization. We invite all martial artists whose passions fall under the wide umbrella of HEMA to participate in the Alliance as members, volunteers, or contributors of any stripe.

As you browse this site, under construction as it is, you will find the obligatory explanations of what HEMA is and what the Alliance is; you will find long lists of links to resources and manuals for the benefit of the community as a whole; you will find the articles and bylaws under which the Alliance has been founded. In short, you should find a great deal of transparency in the Alliance—governance, projects, and budget. The  Alliance is a resource for the entire HEMA community, and as such all of its business is community business.

We have big plans for the future. A quick glance at our calendar shows a number of events sponsored by the Alliance throughout the US in late 2009 and early 2010. The most important of these will be in Houston, March 2010, as we inaugurate an annual event co-sponsored by the Western Martial Arts Coalition (WMAC), our sister organization within the HEMA community.

But our plans extend well past events, as we work to provide a number of services which we feel are needed within our scattered community. Pay attention to the Services page as we develop and grow. And if you have a skill, talent, or just a lot of enthusiasm and time to share with the community, please read the How You Can Help page.

Whether you’re a member of the Alliance, considering membership, or just a member of the global HEMA community, we welcome you to participate, look around, and lend a hand.

Study hard; train harder.

Jake Norwood
Maryland Kunst Des Fechtens
Acting President (Governing Council), The HEMA Alliance

January 15, 2010

I love swords. I have always loved swords. This love of swords inspired my love of martial arts. I suspect that many of you now reading this welcome have a similar experience to share. No matter our differences, we have a great source of unity in our common interest. Building community and sharing our collected knowledge is a major purpose not  only of the HEMA Alliance, but specifically of the Curriculum Council. Every single one of you has the potential to promote knowledge of Historical European Martial Arts.

Now is an exciting time to be involved in HEMA. There is so much information out there that no one has time to deal with all of it. However, there are also many practitioners who have begun to show fruits of their studies. We have enough skill and knowledge floating around out there that cooperation is all we need to bring HEMA into the mainstream.

I encourage you to use our resources, engage in discussions on our forums, and to bring us your questions and your answers. I hope that we can take some of what you have and improve upon it, and that you will take some from what we offer and improve upon that.

Stew Feil
True Edge Academy
Acting Director of Curriculum, The HEMA Alliance

Jan 15, 2010