News

Over December 2023 and January 2024, Parkour UK’s connecting communities team conducted a survey to gain some further insight into the UK parkour community. The idea of this survey was to gain insight into the interest the UK parkour community has on both coaching and competition.

The survey also gave us some insight on age and geographic data.

It is worth noting that a sample size of 100 people is very small, and as such, we are not looking to generalise with this report.

The results of this survey have now been published, and can be accessed by clicking the link below.

Read the Survey Report Here.

Following our AGM at the end of 2023 and elected member elections early this year, we are pleased to announce some board updates.

Representing the community as an elected director, we welcome Dan Timms. Dan is director and coach at JUMP Parkour, and a tutor for Parkour UK.  Dan has designed several parkour parks around the country and brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience.  I know he is excited to contribute to the next phase of development for the organisation.

In the same director elections Chris Keighley was elected for a second term, well done to Chris.  Our third elected director Richard Marshall continues in his post until 31^st August.

We would like to thank Frazer Meek for his contribution to the board over several years. Having representation from the membership is hugely beneficial, allowing the board to be more closely connected to the community.  Frazer has done that, led by his passion for Parkour, so a big thank you. 

This summer we will be looking for further elected directors, so if you feel you can make a positive contribution to the future of Parkour UK, please do consider putting yourself forward.  If you would like to discuss these opportunities informally then feel free to reach out.

We also wish our Independent Director, Natasha Preville, all the best for the future as she will be leaving the board at the end of her tenure. Natasha has been a huge advocate for diversity and inclusion and has brought significant experience to the board. Natasha has successfully led the ED&I Sub Committee, sat on the Nominations Sub Committee, and starting the process for our Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP), a crucial part of our Code for Sports Governance requirements, which are mandatory to receive Sport England Funding. We are currently in the recruitment process for Natasha’s replacement. 

Thank you to everyone who contributes to the Parkour UK board. These are all voluntary positions requiring a significant amount of time and energy from all.  I’m personally proud of the work you all do, with the best intent for Parkour in the UK at the forefront.  We look forward optimistically to the future, continuing to represent and support our community.

Dr Tracy Rea
Chair

Esprit Concrete: FYI has been working across London to deliver a combination of parkour coaching and counselling to communities.

The BBC recently ran a feature on them, which you can check out by clicking the link below!

The minutes from the 2023 Annual General Meeting are now available.

The annual general meeting provides a summary of the organisation’s progress throughout the year and is attended by Parkour UK members.

You can read the minutes here.

If you are interested in reading minutes or recordings from previous meetings, please check out our governance page.

Parkour UK would like to express a huge amount of thanks and gratitude to our Senior Independent Director, Parul Agarwal, who has stepped up as our interim CEO over the last few months.
 
Following our induction day on Friday, Parul will now hand over to Sam Bradley, our new CEO.
 
Parul has made an impact on both the Parkour UK staff team and the parkour community over the last few months. Parul stepped up at a very important time for Parkour UK.
 
Parul very quickly dedicated her time to Parkour UK, getting up to speed and going above and beyond. For Parul, no challenge was too tough, and she faced each one head-on with enthusiasm, passion, and energy.
 
When it comes to the staff team, Parul has been approachable, compassionate, and caring, with a huge focus on employee well-being. She has provided a number of opportunities for the staff team to develop and grow within their roles over the last few months.
 
With the community, Parul quickly identified areas where Parkour UK could be communicating more. Parul helped us run our “Employment Webinar” sessions and led our “Budget Webinar” – which broke down our spending and forecasts for the next year going forward to the parkour community.
 
Parul also gave parkour a go, visiting Parkour Generations London for the Mother & Daughter workshop run by Women in Sport in collaboration with Parkour UK.
 
We want to express a huge amount of thanks to Parul for all of her hard work over the last few months and the brilliant impact she has left on the organisation, team, and growth of the sport.
 
Thank you, Parul!

Another few months have passed, and we’re here to give you an update on what has happened at Parkour UK.

Our Recruitment Process

In early September, we held our “Recruitment Day,” where we invited applicants from our recent round of job offerings to Loughborough to join us for the day.

Parkour UK is incredibly excited to be growing and expanding the Parkour UK team. We are excited to have the new starters join us and help us with our goal of serving, elevating, and adding value to the parkour community.

We would like to welcome our new team!

Sam Bradley joins Parkour UK as our new CEO and Nadine Barnard as our new Head of Development.

Max Ward joins us as Connecting Communities Lead, and Charlie Havill joins us as Connecting Communities Support.

Tom Redfern joins us as our Competition Framework Project Lead. Tom has been a prominent figure in the UK competition space for a number of years, and we are excited for him to bring his expertise to this role.

Over the next few months, the new staff will be connecting with the parkour community on a number of different levels.

Women’s Engagement Project

In September, we also released our latest piece in the Women’s Engagement Project.

Meet Amy Harcourt, a 22-year-old parkour athlete from Manchester.

We sat down with Amy to delve into her inspiring journey through gender-affirming hormone treatment, the challenges she faces, and her commitment to trans inclusion in parkour.

Amy took part in a recent research study that looked at how hormone treatment affects sporting performance and paves the way for a more inclusive and equitable
sports environment.

We filmed the project in Brighton with help from Sacha Powell and Silvia, and we would also like to say a huge thanks to Blair Hamilton and the University of Brighton

Click below to watch the full video!

Women In Sport #TimeTogether

We organised a free parkour workshop to celebrate Women In Sport’s #TimeTogether campaign.

This campaign aims to keep girls in sports throughout their teenage years!

We invited all mums, aunties, guardians, friends, older sisters, and teenage girls to join us for a free parkour workshop at Parkour Generations London on October 7th at 2 p.m.

Check out the highlight video from Women in Sport below!

Feel the thrill of parkour🤸‍♀️

For #TimeTogether, @ParkourUK hosted a mums and daughters class for those wanted to try out the sport.

Watch the video to find out how they got on📸https://t.co/6NepFoD1Vw @brentcrosstown pic.twitter.com/cevezEdRqu

— Women in Sport (@Womeninsport_uk) October 24, 2023

Gatecrasher – An All Women’s Parkour Film

In September, Lynn flew out to Bratislava to support “Gatecrasher” – An all women’s parkour film.

Lynn spent some time documenting the action behind the scenes.

Supporting the “Gatecrasher” project aligns with our “Women’s Engagement” project, helping promote and support the women seen within our sport.

Parkour UK Level 2 Database

All of our coaching courses for 2023 are now complete. We’ve been assessing post-course feedback all throughout the year.

One topic that has been continuously mentioned is the challenges that come with finding a Level 2 Parkour UK coach to sign off your supervised coaching hours.

We are currently working on building a database of all the Level 2 Parkour UK-qualified coaches in the UK.

If you’re a Parkour UK Level 2 qualified coach, and have not yet been contacted by us, please reach out to Callun at callun.lavington@parkour.uk

Parkour UK Podcast – Developing An App for Parkour

Our latest podcast episode involves a discussion with Generic Parkour and the “Spotmapp” developers.

The Spotmapp app has been adopted by many competition organisers over the last 10 months, so we sat down with a discussion with with the team to find out a little more about their plans for the app, and what they aim to achieve with it.

We trialled a remote recording of this podcast episode, and we would love to hear your feedback.

World Mental Health Day

World Mental Health Day was on October 10th, and we collaborated with Contendunt to provide some mental health information and resources on our social media platforms.

Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay , and although we should be talking about mental health every day of the year, today is a really good day to raise awareness and start conversations when it comes to mental health.

Here are three tips to look after your mental health and the mental… pic.twitter.com/y9A80gGMiB

— Callun Contendunt (@Cal_Contendunt) October 10, 2023

We want to thank Spiral Freerun CIC for joining us in raising mental health awareness for World Mental Health Day a few weeks ago 🙌 pic.twitter.com/CCoSfZbMhG

— Parkour UK (@ParkourUK) October 24, 2023

Parkour UK – 2024 Courses

We are currently in the process of scheduling our Level 1 and Level 2 Parkour UK coaching qualification courses for 2024.

We will aim to release all courses for 2024 by the end of the year.