Events
Our Events
One of our main activities is putting on displays of our various skills to the public at events that we can either organise ourselves or appear at as part of somebody else's event.
Our main display offering is in the medieval period but we can also offer displays across a wide range of other historical periods including New Zealand Mounted Rifles and 16th Century Border Reivers.
Our Medieval Tournament Display offering is our most comprehensive. Our standard Medieval display is to appear as a 2 to 4 rider team and we can either just ride around in costume, interacting with the public or we can put on a demonstration of either mounted skills or jousting. Given enough lead time we can also put on jousting tournaments with 4 - 8 local and international riders supported by dozens of foot combatants subject to horse availability and funding.
Our Mounted Rifles display is now also well developed with over 10 years experience in this period. Again our standard Mounted Rifles Display is to appear as a 2 to 4 rider team where again we can just ride round in costume, put on a living history display, interacting with the public or we can put on a demonstration of a 4 Rider Section Parade and Battle Drills. Given enough lead time we can also put on larger displays supported by dozens of foot combatants subject to personnel availability and funding.
Our Border Reiver displays are based on the light cavalry skills of the 15th century Scottish and English Border Reivers. Again our standard Border Reiver Display is to appear as a 2 to 4 rider team where again we can just ride round in costume, put on a living history display, interacting with the public or we can put on a demonstration of mounted skills including archery from horseback which was a common Border Reiver practice.
These three periods give our team a wide range of skills that can also be applied to other historical periods. While we don't have the costumes or equipment for these periods, we can do them if suitable and safe clothing and equipment is provided. We have appeared as fantasy characters in films and LARP events for example.
For Event Organisers
We've been doing public and private events for over 25 years. These include the highly successful Harcourt Park World Invitational Jousting Tournaments in Upper Hutt from 2003 to 2015 which in their later years attracted 10,000 spectators and much international media attention. This event was entirely organised by our own members. In more recent years we haven't run events on this scale simply because of lack of access to younger horses with the suitable temperament and training.
Safely is our main concern but the risk of injury is always there despite our best efforts to minimise the chance of a severe injury. Correct armour, regular training and risk management practices developed from on-going experience go a long way to managing the risk to an acceptable level and in over 25 years of jousting and other displays we have never had a horse injured in any way or a rider seriously injured. We have also never had an incident with any members of the public.
We provide our own Public Liability Insurance, Risk Management Plan and we also have a Theatrical Fire Arms licence to allow us to do displays involving firearms, including firing blank cartridges.
We are a non-profit organisation in that none of our members get paid wages or salaries for their time and efforts but either organising or taking part in displays and events does come with unavoidable costs - horse and personnel transport, repair and maintenance of costume and equipment, display consumables such as lances, etc. So we charge a display fee for our services. The level of display fee depends on the size and scale of the display.
To discuss your event and the costs of our involvement please contact Callum.