NGB

Parkour UK Monthly Update – November 2022

As the year draws to a close, we’re here to deliver the final update article of the year. 2022 has been a huge year for Parkour UK, with many exciting pivotal points in the organisation’s history. Here’s Parkour UK’s Monthly Update for November 2022.

December’s update should be out in the first week of January 2023.

UK Coaching Awards

Next week, the UK Coaching Awards take place in Leeds.

Last month, we announced that 3 coaches from the parkour community had been shortlisted as finalists for the awards.

This is the first time in the awards’ 25-year history that parkour coaches have become finalists and is a huge achievement for both the coaches involved and the sport as a whole.

Once again, Parkour UK want to congratulate our 3 finalists for their achievements, and we look forward to seeing you in Leeds on 6th December!

Finalists:

Callum Windsor – Young Coach of the Year
Sam Coppack – Coaching Podcast of the Year
Adam Romaine – Change A Life Award

Parkour UK Jobs – UPDATE

Following the success of expanding the workforce earlier this year, throughout October/November, we hosted our second wave of recruitment.

We were hiring for two new part-time roles.

  • Finance Support
  • Workforce Support

Also, we have been looking for subcommittee members in the areas of.

  • Finance, Audit & Probity
  • Diversity & Inclusion

Applications have now closed for these roles and recruitment has concluded. Expect an update from us regarding these soon.

Mental Health First Aid – Peterborough

Parkour UK is running its second Mental Health First Aid England course, delivered by Parkour UK’s Head of Development, Chris Grant at the start of December. The course will take place over two days, ( The 1st and 2nd of December) in Peterborough.

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a training course that teaches people how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue.

MHFA won’t teach you to be a therapist, but it will teach you to listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis – and even potentially stop a crisis from happening.

You’ll learn to recognise warning signs of mental ill health and develop the skills and confidence to approach and support someone while keeping yourself safe.

The MHFA course costs £85, a heavily discounted rate, and is perfect for individuals, coaches, or members of organisations who are looking to learn something that may benefit their everyday life or workplace.

We will be looking at running more Mental Health First Aid courses in 2023. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you or your coaching organisation are interested.

Our First MHFA Course – Brighton July 2022

2023 Course Dates – UPDATE

So far, no 2023 dates have been officially announced for any upcoming Level 1 or Level 2 Parkour UK courses. As stated in our last monthly update, we have mapped the dates for Level 2 courses through 2023.

The Good News!
Course dates will be announced by the end of the year, with information regarding the new Level 2 format coming early next year. The Level 2 course is expected to start in March.

We will send out an email once these dates are confirmed and announced.

Our Latest Level 1 Course – Peterborough

All Hands Meeting

Following our attendance at the UK Coaching Awards in Leeds on December 6th, the team is spending the following two days together. This is for our quarterly all-hands meeting. We previously held our all-hands meeting in Brighton.

The last all-hands meeting meant we were able to report our progress in a way that we hadn’t before, with Lynn, Callun, Simon, and Kieran all presenting to the board in their area of expertise, following answering the questions the board had asked them.

There is no board meeting this time round, but with it being the last all-hands team meeting of the year, it gives us the chance for the team to update everyone on their progress, and the steps we are going to take in 2023.

Teachers CPD Qualifications

As 2022 closes, we have had a surge in demand for Teachers’ CPD courses. Our CPDs allow for parkour to become part of the PE syllabus in schools and help equip teachers with the skills they need to deliver safe and efficient parkour coaching.

If you are interested in a Teacher CPD course in your school or area, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Simon. ( simon.vardy@parkour.uk )

Our Latest Teacher’s CPD in Durham in November

That’s it for our monthly updates for the year.

Remember, our Parkour UK members get these updates early VIA email. You can sign up for a membership here.

Our next update will be available in the New Year.

Have a great Christmas and New Year!

The Parkour UK Team

York Takeover – The New Parkour Competition Format Highlighting A More Inclusive Approach.

At Parkour UK, we want to highlight community competitions and events that happen throughout the year.

As the world is slowly adapting to life after the initial COVID outbreaks, social contact is slowly starting to return to normal for the first time in two years.

After two years of very few parkour events, both internationally and nationally, parkour events and competitions have started to pick up again.

The newest of these community-organized parkour competitions include “Takeover” events.

Takeover events are when an individual or group from the parkour community spends some time compiling a list of challenges in their city. Parkour practitioners will then descend onto the city, trying to complete as many challenges as possible in a set time frame (Typically a day or two.)

The first of these events popped up in the UK earlier this year, the first being the Sheffield Takeover.

Since then, a second Takeover event has been held in York, with another being announced in Liverpool for November of this year.

The York Takeover had 50 Parkour Challenges under 4 categories.

  • York Classics: A collection of challenges celebrating the heart of York Parkour, and the people who have trained there.
  • Old School: A collection of challenges inspired by the Yamakasi, focusing on grit, strength, and endurance.
  • New School: A collection of challenges inspired by recent trends in Parkour. Think spins, funk, and tekky weirdness.
  • Flow: A collection of challenges involving the smooth linking of movements together.

The event had a prize pool of over £400, split evenly between the Men’s and Women’s divisions. Within the last few years, the vast majority of the parkour community has been pushing for equal prize money in competitions for men and women. Community-organized parkour events have been leading this change within the sport.

A parkour event in Norway, called the “Oslo Movement Gathering” also donated £100 to help with equal prize money.

I spoke to Sam Coppack. Sam is a “Professional Member” at Parkour UK and hosts the Parkour Coach Companion podcast. He is also responsible for hosting the York Takeover event a few weekends ago. He kindly gave me some insight into the event from an organizer’s perspective and gave some tips on what to do if you want to host your own city takeover event.

So, getting started, I asked where the inspiration for the York Takeover came from.

“The Sheffield Takeover was a major inspiration for our York Takeover event. Their 2-day, 100-challenge format was a big success, and I felt that it was a new, interesting strand of parkour street competition. I absolutely loved the experience, and as soon as I got home, I began thinking about the logistics of a York Takeover event.

I also have to give huge credit to people like Renae Dambly, who on my podcast, The Parkour Coach Companion, explained her “Search and Destroy” jam, which had a similar format.”

Sam is mostly by himself in the York scene. The planning of the event took almost a month of dedicated hard work and preparation. This involved taking photos of all the challenges, annotating them, announcing and advertising the event (mostly through social media), building a spot map for York, and managing prizes, such as money and discount codes from parkour brands.

Parkour UK, group of parkour practitioners, York Takeover 2022, Parkour UK
The York Takeover Event – Phot from @York_Gents Instagram

“I spoke to lots of people online and sought after some advice from the organizers of the Sheffield Takeover, Adam Dore and Liam Norbury. On the day, Ollie (Sam’s Housemate) had been building a spreadsheet for the points recording, and I sought more help from Dean Stimpson about the scoring and other logistics. He gave me some moral support.

I was very nervous, and honestly, I put a bit too much work on myself.”

Of course, like any casually organized parkour event, there were some concerns.

“Weather, injuries, and being moved on from spots were the main areas of concern. Thankfully, the weather held out, and there was only one significant injury (a sprained wrist), and only got moved on from a few spots. I was disappointed to find that, in the morning prior to the event, there had already been an incident with the residents, but I gave a strong word to contestants which seemed to work for the rest of the day.”

I asked Sam if he thought the day was a success and if he had any areas of improvement for next time.

“I can happily say it was a success. We managed to sell over 50 tickets for the event, there were few injuries, and we were only moved on from a few spots. I received a lot of praise throughout the day, and afterward too. York has never seen so much parkour in one day. There was something special about seeing people jumping around every corner you turned.

We pooled enough money for a Women’s category and a 16 and Unders category too. This helped attract students from up North. NBDs (Never Been Done Challenges) were conquered, Greggs was eaten, and Instagram was flooded with hundreds of challenges being completed.

My format was experimental and a little complicated, but gave contestants an interesting experience, and catered to a broad skill set.

The scoring was very full-on. Ollie sat inside for about 6 hours, and both Dean and I had to help throughout. We had to postpone the awards ceremony because we hadn’t finished, meaning some people had already left for their trains. We got some of the scores wrong, including the women’s podium, which was frustrating and embarrassing.

More hands on deck were definitely needed, and we could have perhaps staggered the points onslaught by enforcing a midday break, where everyone submitted at the same time, rather than relentlessly.

Some feedback from the community also mentioned that the event felt a little rushed, with only 6 hours to complete 50 challenges. For some, this sense of adventure was a great way to test themselves, but for others, it drained the enjoyment of training.

We could have advertised earlier and harder, especially to get more women to get involved. We only had 3.”

I went on to ask Sam about the future of Takeover events, and whether or not he would like to see more.

“I would love to see more Takeovers. They are a fantastic way to get a real sense of a city and are exciting to those that thrive on treasure hunting and exploring. I’m already excited for the confirmed Liverpool Takeover this year, as well as whisperings from many other communities making moves. I expect we’ll see a number of takeover events next Spring when the sun comes back. The scope is massive. If they catch on we could be seeing Takeover style events across the world, and that would be wonderful.”

Sam kindly gave me a list of advice for organizers of Takeover events, which I have detailed below.

  • Get a team together to organize the event.
  • Ensure it’s fair, equal, and inclusive (Both people and skill levels)
  • Don’t be afraid to be a bit experimental, new ideas can spread.
  • Communicate with previous organizers of Takeover events.
  • Advertise clearly, but ask questions to the community.
  • Think carefully about your points system.
  • Be clear, and strict, on your challenges.
  • Consider safety aspects and respect for the city and the people within it.
  • Find the best parking locations.
  • Advertise hard, and don’t be afraid to reach out to brands for sponsorship and donations.

A huge well done to Sam and all of those involved in the organization of the event. Make sure you follow the York Gents on Instagram by clicking the link here.

Monthly Update – September 2022

Every month, we will be putting together a monthly update on our website to keep you guys updated with everything that has gone on at Parkour UK.

A Full Team

In September, Simon Vardy settled into his role as Workforce Lead, taking over Kieran’s previous role.

Simon will be helping us accelerate the development of our Level One Coaching Qualification & our Level Two Coaching Qualification. Simon’s role will also look for new opportunities for the workforce. Simon is an experienced performance coach with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry and professional sports up to the elite level.

Our previous workforce lead, Kieran Wylde has moved positions at Parkour UK and will be working in our membership lead role, helping accelerate our memberships here at Parkour UK.

This finishes the employment of people from our employment day we ran back in June of this year, with a team now working in digital support, workforce, and membership

It’s really exciting and brilliant having a team now at Parkour UK. Chris Grant (PKUK’s head of development) is always ecstatic about logging onto the weekly all-hands meeting and seeing a team full of people working together.

Parkour UK Meets With The Board

In the closing weeks of September, the full team traveled to Brighton for the quarterly board meeting. We were able to report our progress in a way that we hadn’t before, with Lynn, Callun, Simon, and Kieran all presenting to the board in their area of expertise, following answering the questions the board had asked them.

We spent time discussing each of the areas that Parkour UK is currently focusing on, and spent some time together, before having some lovely food.

It was really great having the full team together, in one place, to discuss Parkour UK’s current path, projections, and areas of focus.

The Parkour UK Team – (left to right) Callun, Lynn, Kieran, Chris, Dan, Simon.

Below, we have summarized some of the topics of discussion, and steps going forward in different areas of the organization.

Membership: We spent a large chunk of the Tuesday discussing what our membership might look like, trying to categorize the community to look at what we might be able to offer in terms of knowledge and services across the whole of the community. This includes improving what we have already (such as coaching), but what we can also do to help support content creators, freelancers, athletes, etc. It was an exciting conversation that we are excited to get the ball rolling on. This is where Kieran, our Membership Lead, will be focusing his work in the next 6 months to a year.

Digital and Story Telling: Callun and Lynn reported to the board about our socials with really good statistics and measures. Our socials have received a tonne of engagement, interaction, and positive comments since the digital team came on board back in mid-July. On top of this, Lynn has also been working on a huge mapping document trying to capture the name, location, and purpose of different parkour teams, organizations, groups, and freelancers across the country within the parkour space.

Workforce: With the new school year starting, we are getting back into schools, and running Teacher CPD courses. We have also mapped all the dates for Level 2 courses through 2023, which will be announced once we are confident that the materials are going to be ready. Our plan is to announce the courses for the whole year to allow some flexibility to allow you to book. We will, eventually, work towards this for the Level One courses also.

Toolkits

Something that did pop up during our discussion was the toolkits we have on our website. We have a bunch of free toolkits available on our website, which you can find here. There is a range of toolkits, including “How to start a university society”, a “Business” toolkit, and “Risk Assessment” toolkits, all available to you, so please check them out.

Email Updates and Facebook Group For Members

We are currently working on building up our email newsletter for our member organizations and individuals again. This had some traction before, but earlier this year it dropped off a little bit. Now, with the digital team onboard, we have the capacity as an organization to fill these tasks to a standard we are happy with.

Storror’s Big Wall Open

Of course, we couldn’t do an update of September without mentioning Storror’s monumental street event, the “Big Wall Open.” – Callun visited the event, watching it all unfold.

The event was brilliant. It was amazing seeing how many people turned up. Not just parkour practitioners, but young children and their parents, many of who don’t train in parkour, they have just come down and appreciate the sport, speaking with the community, and getting to know more about the sport. Storror’s impact on the sport we love has been incredible, and I know this event has cemented itself as one of the sports’ best, but as a stepping stone to get so many other people into parkour.

Callun speaking about the Storror Big Wall Open

Community Posts

At the start of September, we started rolling out a weekly post of some movements from the parkour community. The feedback from these posts has been amazing, with the community loving the idea of us using our platform to show the progression and practice of those within our sport. Make sure you use the hashtag #ParkourUK so we can see your clips! Remember to also follow us on Instagram, @ParkourUK

New Parkour Park in Taunton, Somerset

Our partners Freemove recently completed the installation of a new Parkour Park in Taunton, Somerset. The facility launched in mid-Decemnber as is now open to the public and is free to access.

As more and more Parkour Parks emerge we are seeing the direct and beneficial impact of the publication of the new British Standard for Parkour Equipment, BS10075:2013. Since its publication in February 2013 it is enabling local authorities, schools, colleges, universities, sports centres, land owners, manufacturers and installers to build Parkour facilities and equipment that are fit-for-purpose, safe and to the recognised standard.

Additionally BS10075:2013 is now being developed into a European Standard with the pioneering work led by Parkour UK being used as the ‘base document’ for the development of the EN standard.

#ParkourInspiringAGeneration

Sport England – Parkour Sportivate Shoot

Following the announcement by Sport England in April, that an extra £24 million would be invested to expand and extend its successful Sportivate programme, Parkour UK has been working on a photo shoot and video to promote the programme. 

Parkour is one of the most popular sports on the Sportivate programme, demonstrating the significant interest and impact Parkour has with young people aged 14-25. Here are some of the photos from a recent photo shoot we did with Sport England’s Sportivate team at LEAP Parkour Park, with the video featuring Comedy Dave & Parkour Generations, who deliver Parkour Sportivate projects in London, to be released shortly.

If you would like more information or support establishing a Parkour Sportivate session please contact us or your local County Sports Partnership.

 

Images courtesy of Richard Gray (@RugFoot)

Freemove Parkour Roadshow 20th – 24th May 2013

Freemove are hosting a week long ‘Parkour Roadshow’ to showcase their new portfolio of Parkour equipment during a nationwide roadshow running every day between May 20-24.

Cardiff 20th May 2013  |  Oxford 21st May 2013  |  Birmingham 22nd May 2013  |  Leeds 23rd May 2013  |  Glasgow 24th May 2013

Be amongst the first to try out their innovative products that enable an indoor, challenging Parkour experience with their new modular portable equipment.

Bring your trainers and try out Freemove’s amazing Indoor and Outdoor Equipment! They’ll be holding demonstrations, workshops and free training (indoor and outdoor) open to absolutely anyone, so get along, meet the Freemove team and the local parkour communities. Spaces are limited, so early booking is advised using the links above^. More information can be found on their Roadshow Event page.