Education and Community
The Museum is also prominent in the local community and hosts a number of educational programs on medieval history and arms and armor, ranging from school workshops and teacher-education to scholarly lectures. Approximately 12,000 of the museum’s visitors are school children from throughout Massachusetts and the New England region whose annual visits are part of their regular social studies or science curriculum. The outreach program of the museum's education department reaches another 4,000 people in five states. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the museum hosts a variety of exhibits throughout the year and conducts an ongoing series of special programs, symposia, demonstrations of falconry and period swordplay.
Most significantly, the Higgins Armory is a major center of study for Western Martial Arts. Scholars associated with the Museum such as curator Jeffrey Forgeng, William Short, and Ken Mondschein have produced monographs and translations, given papers and sponsored sessions at scholarly conferences, and lectured and demonstrated all over the world. The Higgins Armory Sword Guild, founded in part by Patri J. Pugliese, is a study group that conducts research into Western Martial Arts and demonstrates both at the Museum as well as in the community. Since the summer of 2009, the Museum has also hosted an ongoing series of thrice-weekly classes, the Higgins Academy of the Sword, where students learn classical fencing as well as fencing with the historical weapons.
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