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!
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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
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 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.
— Callun Contendunt (@Cal_Contendunt) October 10, 2023
Here are three tips to look after your mental health and the mental… pic.twitter.com/y9A80gGMiB
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
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.
Following our recent round of recruitment, Parkour UK is excited to announce the appointment of Sam Bradley as our new CEO.
Sam has spent the last two decades in senior roles supporting athletes and teams across Professional, Olympic and Paralympic sports. These have included Welsh Rugby, England Cricket, GB Hockey, British Equestrian, and the UK Sports Institute. He is also currently vice-chair of the Performance Advisory Group for Archery GB.
Sam is passionate about supporting others to succeed, to grow, and to be the best they can be. He believes in the power of sport and physical activity and the positive role it can play in the health and wellbeing of all in society, ensuring that it is accessible to everyone.
Sam was attracted to Parkour UK because of its open, democratic, inclusive approach and the potential to build a healthy, stable NGB to fulfill its mission to serve, elevate, and add value to the Parkour community.
Sam holds a Masters in Sporting Directorship and is a qualified executive coach.
Parkour UK is excited to announce two new non-executive directors joining our board.
Jude Taylor joins us as NED for governance and safeguarding.
Jude brings with her an excellent knowledge of the UK’s sporting landscape with almost 20 years of experience in management roles within the sports and charity sectors. She has held notable positions with various sports committees and is an accomplished leader and motivator of people.
She specializes in sports governance, integrity, equality, diversity, and inclusion. Jude particularly enjoys facing big strategic challenges, change management, and problem-solving, utilising her extensive network within the industry.
Jude is currently supporting UK Sport in the role of Sport Advisor, leading the frontline assurance of UK Sports standards and requirements with NGBs, including in governance, diversity, and integrity. Prior to this, she was the Chief Executive Officer of an independent charity, Together Active, where she developed a strong organisational culture and achieved excellent governance standards.
Duncan Seller joins us as NED for digital and marketing.
Duncan is a digital communications and marketing expert with over 8 years of experience working in the world of sports.
Duncan has worked across all levels of sporting organisations from amateur to professional, international and governance organisations.
Between 2019 and 2022 Duncan worked for Glasgow Warriors leading on the club’s digital content and PR strategy leading to a three-fold increase in video output, a 27% growth in viewership, and generating an average of 80 pieces of print and digital coverage each week in national publications. Duncan now works for one of the UK’s leading sports communications agencies creating and managing campaigns for TennisScotland, CSSC, and UEFA – including the Europa League and Women’s Champions League.
The Board and I wish them luck in their roles and thank them for joining us.
– Dr Tracy Rea, Chair Parkour UK