We have quite a lot of exciting news today, because we will be reopening soon! There has been quite a lot of furious work in the background, paving the way for the club to reopen, while also finding us a venue with greater longevity and more space.
When are we reopening?
Since this is doubtless the first question that everyone will have, the answer is that we should be reopening on Wednesday the 5th of August. Next week!
The time is changing just very slightly, and we will now be meeting from 7:00-9:00pm on Wednesdays (instead of the 7:30-9:30pm that it was previously).
What is the new venue?
We will be meeting in the sports hall at LC Sports within the Liverpool College:
The address is: LC Sports within Liverpool College, Queens Drive, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, L18 8BG.
This venue is only about 5 minutes drive away from the LJMU campus where we have been training until now, so it should not be too different a trip for people to make. It is beside the same train line with the nearest station now being Mossley Hill.
Is the new venue bigger?
Yes it is! We will now have a half sports hall, meaning that we probably have slightly more than twice as much space as we had at LJMU.
What will this do to the attendance fees?
The hall is bigger and therefore more expensive, but we will be keeping the attendance fees just the same. Because we can now accommodate more people, we will make up the difference that way, rather than by raising our prices.
What will practices look like when we start back?
Well, the coronavirus hasn’t gone away, and we still need to follow government regulations. Therefore, we will be returning in a non-contact fashion until the government allows contact sports to resume.
This means that for the foreseeable future we will be doing various sword-handling drills, flourishes, technical training and solo drills, and suchlike. We will not be able to hit each other or do any sparring for a while yet.
At least for the first session, although we will not needing fencing masks, we will be requiring face coverings while we work out how best to do our indoor practices in this new space safely.
What will happen to the virtual sessions?
As our Wednesday nights return to physical training, our virtual sessions on Wednesday evenings will need to cease. We will continue to do perhaps one virtual session a month, perhaps on a Monday, since these have been an excellent way to discuss points of history, context, and source material.
Anyone paying monthly attendance fees will gain access to the monthly virtual sessions for no additional fee.
Will beginners be welcome when the club reopens?
For the first session on Wednesday the 5th of August, attendance will be restricted to current club members, to give ourselves the best chance to work out how to use the space safely and to do a non-contact practice.
Beginners will be welcome from Wednesday the 12th of August since we should have acclimatised to the new venue and to the new way of training.
What about the LJMU venue?
We might go back for the odd event here and there over the next few months, but we probably won’t be spending any more time there, sadly.
The LJMU campus is not going to be reopening for public bookings until late September at the earliest, and in fact might not be able to accommodate sports clubs until even later in the year.
Furthermore, the LJMU campus will be closing in the summer next year and all their sports activities will be moving to the city centre. Their new building isn’t really suitable for us, so we would have been needing to change venue within a year anyway. It makes more sense for us to do it now and not at the last minute.
Any further questions?
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to send us an email.
To stay abreast of what is happening and to see the photos of our various practices, give our Facebook page a “like” and join our Facebook discussion group.
