Diversifying Parkour – Become a Parkour Coach

Ukemi are offering support for up to five members of the BAME and/or LGBTQIA+ community on a program that will take them from novice to Parkour coaching level. This initiative is run voluntarily by the team and is free at the point of access.

Although we have LGBTQIA+ representation in our core team, the session will be run primarily by a white cis-gendered identified male. The aim, however, is that we will enable better representation in the Glasgow coaching scene post project.

Overview

• Six months (or as long as it takes) of free weekly Parkour sessions in/around Glasgow city centre to get participants to coaching level. The provisional start date is Sunday 12th July.
• Support in applying and gaining funding to cover PKUK examination costs.
• Guidance on how to identify work opportunities as a parkour coach.

Aims

• Increase the visibility of social and ethnic minority groups in public space.
• Develop professional skills.
• Increase diversity and representation of the parkour coaching/scene in Scotland.

Requirements

1. For those with existing coaching/teaching practices or those with a decent foundation of movement. If someone wants to get involved but doesn’t have this, then we may be unable to get them to coaching level within six months.
2. Living in or able to regularly travel to Glasgow.
3. If you have a disability, we would need to talk to the participant before the first session to help us understand the best way to support them.
4. All sessions will run within social distancing guidelines, and this may mean the format is two shorter sessions each week to get everyone in.

Application Procedure

1. Tell us why you want to do it.
2. Have a short phone call or socially distanced walk so we can learn more about your practice, needs, and goals.
3. You're in!!!

If you would like to learn/discuss more, let us know, and we can arrange a phone call.

Email Ukemi - david.banks@ukemi.ninja

A bit more about Ukemi and the thinking behind the project

Ukemi promotes activity in highly urbanised areas and encourages a healthier society through digital design, product creation, and community arts development. We aim to tackle health and safety culture to promote play and demystify fitness and movement to make it more accessible through our products and services.

The team has been reflecting on both the radical changes happening around the world in contrast with the stagnant nature of lockdown. Much of our projects involve trying to re-envision the city as a place of departure for play, creativity and movement. However, these fixed realities we hope for in the future mean nothing without the social conditions in which they become accessible to all.

We must face up to the reality that these often changes don’t begin with objects, products and designs but with people. That it is people who are the catalyst and something we should invest in more for goals further down our roadmap to become a reality. Although we aimed to keep Ukemi out with the coaching world, this is an area in which we can invoke change and launching this standalone project is the action we could take that makes the most sense to us.