PLAY FLAGSHIP FACILITY FOR WESTBOURNE GREEN
Participants focus on their desire to explore their surroundings
I
n June last year, Westminster Coun- cil announced plans to build an outdoor managed Parkour facility in
London’s Westbourne Green. The site aims to mimic an urban
landscape and will contain dozens of objects commonly found in a real city environment including walls, rails and stairs that Parkour or freerunning prac- titioners can use to practice their sport within a safe environment. The new facility, which will be based
at Westminster Academy in Westbourne Green, will feature obstacles for individuals of all abilities and ages and at its heart will showcase an 80m free flow area where practitioners
qualification so that they can meet the demand. That’s a big challenge and it will take several years to fill that shortfall. Sport England would very much like to
see Parkour spread as it recognises the benefits in the schools it’s already taught in. More and more schools want it: it ticks all the boxes for what the govern- ment wants to see in sport education in schools now. And the kids like it, so it’s a win-win situation.
WHAT IS PARKOUR UK WORKING ON DURING THE NEXT 12 MONTHS? The main focus is getting as many people qualified to teach Parkour as possible so that the sport can develop in a posi- tive way. The Level One ADAPT (Art du Deplacement and Parkour Teaching) instructor qualification programme launched in January 2010, and the Level Two course launched in the summer of that year. We’ve done about 15 Level One courses since it launched. It takes
can combine a range of moves and test their skills to the limit. Users can either prove their com-
petence to qualified instructors from Parkour UK in order to use the facility unsupervised, or attend classes which will run at least five nights a week in addition to classes for schools. Anyone over the age of eight can attend the classes, which will start at £1. Up to 100 people can use the facility
at any time with the maximum capacity of the junior area being 60 people and 40 are allowed in the more advanced area. Westminster Council has invested
£90,000 in the facility and the London Marathon Trust £80,000.
a long time to get these things going, and it took quite a while getting the qualifications officially stamped and rec- ognised by all the sporting bodies in the UK but we’re there now. We want to get as many dedicated
people doing the Level One qualification as possible, and expand the number of Level 2 courses accordingly. One of the projects is the development of a qualifi- cation specifically for sports teachers in schools because there’s a huge demand among PE teachers to be able to deliver the basics, and that will begin to be delivered this year.
WHAT’S THE FUTURE FOR PARKOUR? We’d like to see the discipline continue to spread in a good way, so that the original spirit of Parkour isn’t diluted or lost and it continues to grow in popularity. ●
Magali Robathan is managing editor of Leisure Management magazine
72 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital Issue 2 2011 © cybertrek 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84