Greetings! I am Jack Baker, a life-long martial artist with a more recent interest in historical fencing. I am the founder of the Albuquerque Sword Guild and I’d like to extend my personal welcome to you.
If you’ve stumbled across us, you’ve likely entertained an interest in historical fencing or Historical European Martial Arts. You’re in the right place and in this blog post I am going to acquaint you with our club’s Purpose, my Goals with the Guild, and the kind of Culture that we will focus on creating and sustaining as we grow.
The Purpose of Albuquerque Sword Guild is to encourage and sustain a community of historical fencers focused on promoting one another’s development in the Art. This means that mutual assistance - the original aspiration of the Guild structure in Medieval Europe - is our North Star as a community. Should you join us, you’ll agree to take it upon yourself to prioritize the development of your partners as an abiding principle. The key to success for the entire Guild revolves around this counter-intuitive approach: if each member takes this upon themselves, success is guaranteed for all. With this orienting perspective kept front and center - we will naturally grow together as a community.
My Goals as the Coach and facilitator of the group are to develop high-quality fencers and martial artists while creating an environment of growth and development that is Inclusive, Encouraging, and Growth-oriented. Everyone is welcome as long as they abide by the North Star of mutual assistance. I especially want to welcome those of you who never thought you could be good at martial arts or something like fencing. While my teaching focus is on Historical European Martial Arts these days, I’ve been teaching a variety of other arts for over 30 years. That experience tells me that no matter what your starting point is, if you’re willing to stick with it, you can excel in ways you might have never imagined you could.
With the right Culture, you can get there! It’s important to me that this Culture is nurtured. As Guild members join, I interview each of them and get to know them a little as a person before accepting their application. It’s important to me that they align with the North Star of our community: helping one another grow as martial artists and, ultimately, as people. An inclusive environment is important: you can be gay, straight, trans, cis, non-binary, or non-conforming to any of these notions and you will be welcome here. You can come from any ethnic background or nationality or profession. You can be anyone you want to be, as long as you’re committed to the goal of the Guild - working to help your partners improve first and foremost.
Since promoting and encouraging a culture of tolerance, growth, and mutual respect is such a high priority for me, you can expect the Guild to start small; however, in the long run we hope to see it grow into a vibrant community that spins off new groups with interest in pursuing additional materials that reflect new and growing interests in Historical European Martial Arts over time.
If, in 10 years, the Guild has spawned 5 new Guilds exploring new and exciting aspects of the huge field of Historical European Martial Arts, I’ll feel that we accomplished our mission quite well.
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