As of June 30th 2023, Dan Newton will stepped down as CEO of Parkour UK, a role that he has held since 2019.
Dan started his Parkour UK journey as Interim CEO on a voluntary basis. After securing funding from Sport England to ‘build capacity’, he took on the CEO role in July 2020. Dan’s impact on the organisation has been significant.
In 2019, there was no outside investment and no infrastructure or capacity to implement a strategy. Since then, Parkour UK has secured system partner status with Sport England to work as an integral part of their mission of ‘Uniting the Movement’. This was a key milestone and places Parkour UK alongside other NGBs and at the heart of a collaborative partnership.
Since 2019, Parkour UK has secured £1.575 million through Sport England and has system partner funding secured until March 2027. Dan’s leadership through this process has been valued and symbolic.
We want to thank Dan for his dedicated contribution to Parkour UK and the sport and wish him well in his next adventures.
We are pleased to announce that Parul Agarwal, Senior Independent Director of the Board of Parkour UK, is stepping up as Interim CEO. (Read the full statement here)
Parul has had a busy few weeks since stepping up as our interim CEO and has been acting as the glue during this transitional phase.
Parul is keen to meet members of the parkour community and attend some parkour classes while in the interim CEO position.
During July/August, we were excited to announce that we were looking to expand our team, offering 7 job roles, including:
With the applications now closed, we are looking forward to our recruitment surgery day to meet some of the applicants and grow our team!
In early July, our second Women’s Engagement Project piece started filming in Brighton.
This project features Amy Harcourt, who was filmed by Sacha Powell and Silvija Vil. This project is currently in the editing stage and will be released on our YouTube channel soon.
You can watch our first Women’s Engagement Project piece below.
Our next batch of podcasts is all about parkour coaching.
Simon from our Workforce Team joins Callun, and they discuss everything you need to know about the parkour coaching journey.
The first episode from this series of podcasts is now up and available for you to listen to.
The podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
To address and answer the parkour community’s questions, in July and August, we hosted a series of webinars.
The first of these webinars was “Is Parkour Coaching Right For Me?” – In this webinar, we will discuss everything you need to know about the Parkour UK Level 1 coaching qualification and answer any questions the community may have about the course.
We are putting together a video of our “Is Parkour Coaching Right For Me?” webinar which will be released soon.
In August, we also hosted our “Budgeting for Success” webinar.
This webinar was hosted by our interim CEO, Parul, and was delivered alongside members of the organisation. In this webinar, we discussed our budget spend, as well as our spending plans over the next few years.
We had members of the parkour community attend the webinar and ask some insightful questions regarding what was discussed. It was also a brilliant way for the community to ask any questions, or suggest ideas, to Parkour UK about the work we are doing.
In July, we also visited the new Aspire Parkour Academy.
Aspire Parkour Academy has recently opened their very own indoor space to run their parkour sessions.
Following a few years at their local leisure center, the team at Aspire Parkour Academy has now moved into their very own venue, enabling them to run sessions 7 days a week, without the restrictions of hall hire.
The new indoor facility is located at Orton Southgate, Peterborough.
“We are also working towards open jam sessions, as well as offering birthday parties, and other events spread throughout the school holidays.”
Kieran Wylde, Aspire Parkour Academy
We want to say a huge well done to all of the coaches who attended our Level 2 Parkour Coaching Qualification in London in July.
It was great to see so many learners join us for our London course!
Well done everyone 👏
In August, Callun visited Grimsby for the Team Reality “Grim Jam” 2023 event and competition.
This year, Grim Jam was a two-day event. Day 1 started with the takeover competition format which has risen in popularity within parkour over the last few years. 50 skill challenges based around Grimsby, all within a five-minute walk from one another.
This was followed by the speed qualifiers and skill semi-finals at the parkour park later that day, with the finals taking place on day two of the event at the Team Reality parkour gym.
We won’t talk too much about this event here, there’s a full piece coming out on it soon – but we want to congratulate Team Reality on such a brilliant, inclusive, and well-organised event!
Our workforce team has been diving deep into updating our courses.
These updates include reviewing our policy on supporting learners with additional support needs and exploring new providers for Safeguarding courses for 2024.
We have also started consultation on our new CPD and we are having really interesting conversations to learn what would be beneficial for everyone in the community, and not just coaches.
Towards the end of August, Lynn (Our digital lead) and Tracy (Our Independent Chair) visited London for the Project Next Gen premiere.
The Project Next Gen film, directed by Max Ward, follows 60 parkour athletes from 9 teams around Europe as they train around 1 city.
The film was premiered at the Genesis cinema near the Imax parkour spot. This was followed by a two-day jam and after-party hosted by the organisers.
The community came out in full force, and the energy of the event was unmatched!
The Project Next Gen film will be available to watch soon.
Last Chance To Book – Bedford Level 1
Finally, we would like to remind everyone that bookings for our Level 1 assistant coaching course in Bedford are closing soon!
Click the button below to book your space!
