This Sunday, December 2nd, a team from Parkour Generations will be giving an open workshop at the new Academy Sports Centre near Royal Oak Underground Station in London, where our Beginner's Class and Youth Academy are held. The workshop will run from 2.30-4.30pm in the main sports hall, and is open to the public and free as part of the centre's Community Day. A great opportunity to get a first taste of parkour in the hands of experienced instructors..!
Rumour has it that Parkour Generations will be releasing a slightly skewed parkour video this Christmas to celebrate the holiday season.. Not wanting to compete with the annual Finnish Santa vid, this one is meant to be just a little bit different and will feature most of the team in action.
Parkour Generations Team Member Seb Goudot recently spent a few days in Poland teaching a seminar in Lodz. The trip included training with the Arte Team, and attending the seminar were Polish traceurs from Lodz, Cracow, Warsaw and Kalisz. The seminar was part of the European project "Parkour: Feel the City", and went down very well with all who attended. Seb had a great time, making some good connections and helping once again to bring the parkour community closer together!
This week a team from Parkour Generations heads out to Logrono, Spain to rehearse for a live show in January at the annual Arts Festival, entitled Actual. The Festival will also be screening our award-winning documentary Jump Westminster, and this event will introduce a whole new audience to the discipline. For those whose Spanish is good enough, the Festival's website detailing the parkour section can be found here.
Last week saw the very successful start of the new Beginner's Class at the Academy Sports Centre in Westminster, and it continues tonight. We were happy to see 13 female students within the first session, demonstrating how strong the women's parkour community has become in London. Johann and Chris are running the sessions, and all details can be found here.
The seminar this past weekend in Finland was a huge success. The Finland Parkour Assocation did a fantastic job of hosting the event, and looked after the team from Parkour Generations very well. The 120 or so participants trained with great spirit and strength, and showed real humility despite the high levels of skill that were most evident. Good to see the parkour spirit alive and well even in the colder climates! Huge thanks to Perrtu and everyone there for making the trip so enjoyable, and we hope to be doing much more with the Finnish community in the coming months.
Forrest and Stephane have already arrived in Finland to prepare for this weekend's intriguingly named 'Supreme Parkour Armageddon Seminar'... Dan joins them tomorrow to complete the teaching team, and the fun begins on Saturday. The event is a complete sell-out, with the Finnish Parkour Assocation doing a fine organisational job. Our own Andy Day will be there to photograph the whole event, so expect some fantastic images capturing the shenanigans..!
Recently two products of our London Parkour Academy collaborated to create a short film that was in turn put forward for the Daily Telegraph Ford Film Challenge. Karen Palmer and Alli Shelton, now one of our new coaches, have both been training at our Academy almost since its inception - with Karen as film-maker and Alli providing the subject and the parkour, the short edit entitled 'Mental Block' has proven a big hit and can now be seen on Youtube here. Well worth a click.
Thursday this week is the evening of the Children and Young People’s Services Awards 2007, for which the Jump Westminster project has been nominated. Julie Angel, the film-maker behind the ground-breaking documentary, and Dan will be attending the ceremony at the Hurlingham Club in London. Even to be nominated is a considerable honour, and this kind of exposure does great things in highlighting how useful the discipline of parkour can be in reaching out to children and helping them find their way.
Thomas Couetdic, a long-time Lisses traceur, will be arriving well in advance of the December seminar and while he is here will be making some guest appearances instructing at our regular Academy Classes. Everyone is very much looking forward to having Thomas around for several days: his skill and commitment to training are second to none, and he has a lot to impart.
We are proud to be opening the new Beginners' Academy Classes tonight, operating out of the brand new Academy Sports Centre in Westminster. The incredible facility, which we will be involving more and more in our developments, is very much state-of-the-art and this Tuesday evening class will provide an environment in which people can get to grips with the basics of parkour while also developing the physical fitness and strength it requires.
Our very own Andy Day, a.k.a. Kiell - the best known professional parkour photogapher in the world - has just launched online print sales of his work via his website www.kiell.com. These prints, always visually arresting, make superb wall display pieces and hey, with Christmas just round the corner...
There is always so much more going on at Parkour Generations than we are able to report, even though we are often itching to let the community know of the developments that are occurring. Suffice it to say that the future of the discipline will make everything that has come before look like a warm-up! However, it's vital to remember that it was the diligent, hard training of the founders that put parkour on the map and it is that commitment to training that will keep it there.
Many thanks go out to our friends at parkour.net, the most recognised parkour forum on the web, for supporting our forthcoming seminar. Much more to come on this front...
The December seminar, Rendezvous II, is already selling out fast with traceurs coming in from all over the world. The set-up for the day will be fast and furious, with the training led by the Yamakasi and Lisses traceurs. We will be keeping the booking window open for as long as possible, to offer the seminar to as many as possible... but the sports centre can only take a limited number and we will NOT be able to admit people on the day who have not booked a place. When we are full, we'll announce it right here.
This Thursday sees the start of the Women's Academy Classes, to be held on the first and third Thursday of every month. The classes will be held outdoors at various London hotspots and handled by Stephane, Kazuma and Tracey. All levels of ability and experience are welcome! Numbers will be strictly limited so reservations are needed, and anyone wishing to book a place should email Tracey(at)parkourgenerations.com.
The TVF shoot we are doing this week is progressing very well, with Forrest hitting several spots in London to create a piece of in-house advertising for the healthcare industry to use in 2008. Julie Angel and Andy Day are filming and photographing the piece that has been commissioned by TVF Communications. The end product promises to be something quite special.
The time has come again: Saturday December 8th will see the second Parkour Generations mass seminar, RendezVous II, happening in London. The entire Parkour Generations collective will be running the teaching day, including the world-famous Yamakasi and the Lisses traceurs Seb Goudot, Cisco and Thomas, plus of course the Vigroux brothers, Forrest, Dan and the cream of the UK scene. Booking details can be found here, and it is strictly first-come first served as places are limited.
Internet broadcasting giant Youtube will this Thursday again feature Julie Angel's short film of Forrest and Dan, entitled 'Myspace', on its homepage. This will be the first of a series of Julie's films made in association with Parkour Generations that will be promoted on Youtube's front page, and with 'Myspace' already clocking in at around 800,000 views we can expect parkour to be getting some pretty massive exposure through this.
The Girls' Jam on Sunday 11th November was another good day with great weather, this time with Stephane putting the students through their paces. As a result of the success of these Jams and due to increased demand, we are now opening two outdoor classes per month for women only, to be taught principally by Stephane and Tracey. To reserve a place on one of these classes, and for details, see the relevant Coaching page.
As of Tuesday November 20th we will be opening a new evening Academy Class for beginners/intermediate level at the Academy Sports Centre on the Harrow Road. The classes will run from 8.00-10.00pm every Tuesday, and will mainly be in the capable hands of Johann Vigroux and Chris Keighley. Entry is still only £5, and no booking is necessary. Details and directions can be found on the Classes pages.
We are currently in talks to add another seven schools to our hugely successful Parkour for Schools Programme. The fact that what we teach is perfectly aligned with the new emphasis in school sports education on co-ordination, movement skills and problem solving, means that this expansion is looking likely to go on and on. Engaging children in a fitness activity that they actually enjoy is proving to be a big hit on all levels.
Last night ESPN aired the short documentary piece following American traceur Ryan Ford as he crossed the pond to meet and train with Parkour Generations. Laurent, Chau, Stephane and Seb all spent a couple of days with Ryan in France, and found him to be a very decent and determined guy who really did give his best. You can watch the segment online here.
On the 24/25 November Stephane, Dan and Forrest will be running a seminar in Finland in association with the Finland Parkour Association, and there is now a website dedicated to the event online here, where bookings etc can be made. The event is almost sold out already though, and promises to be pretty special.
With Parkour Generations currently at the centre of a number of ongoing documentary projects, there will again be film cameras in the Academy Class tonight, Monday 5th. Many thanks to Moberly Sports Centre for being so open to all of the filming projects and to the students for tolerating the crews and machinery!
A Sky Partnership film from the Teenage Kicks event we displayed at last week will be showing on the Rich Mix Cinema on November 30th and on the Community Channel on December 13th. The film features some of the Parkour Generations team performing parkour at the annual sporting event, Teenage Kicks, and giving a short presentation on the discipline.
The Halloween class was a big hit, with Amy Slevin as Elasti-Girl and Leon Lawrence as Dracula claiming best-dressed girl and guy, though there was some stiff competition from Yao, Tracey and Naomi in particular! This shot shows some of the better costumed on the night, and amazingly everyone did manage to train for the entire class in their full regalia!
One of the participants at our recent seminar in Italy, run in association with the APKI, has just put a candid video edit of the event online. The seminar was run by Kazuma, Stephane, Thomas and Cisco, with over 100 participants, and was an out and out success. You can watch the video by clicking here.
A reminder that tonight's Academy Class at Moberly Sports Centre (Thursday 1st November) is a Halloween special... come in costume, and best dressed wins a prize ;)
