Parkour Visions is hosting the first obstacle coursing challenge in the Puget Sound area. Athletes of all ages will run, jump, climb and clamber their way through three different courses; the athlete with the best overall time wins the challenge! Everyone confident in their parkour skills is welcome to sign up. Anyone interested in parkour or seeing skilled athletes demonstrate parkour in action are invited to come watch. Funds raised from this event will go to equipment for the gym and funding for our youth outreach programs. Come support the only parkour gym on the west coast, just sure to register here on our Facebook page!
From the moment you enter, it’s obvious that this is not your ordinary gym.
Well that went well! At least 60 people passed through the doors, with the adult clinic getting so huge we had to split into two groups and break out all 60 or so feet of precision trainers to balance on in line! That many people is a bit too much for the current gym space we’ve learned (until we can open up the second room) and we’ll keep events smaller in the future
Marc Ramirez from the Seattle Times was there and he wrote an awesome article that was featured in the paper today as well as photos from Alan Berner and an excellent video put together from Genevieve Alvarez. Our own Kellen Fujimoto spent some time grabbing shots as well, and we’ll update this blog post as more stuff comes in.
Update: Check out Tim Kahn’s video coverage of the event!
We are extremely happy to announce that, after many months of searching, we will be moving into our own gym this week! The gym is located on 4216 6th Ave NW in between Ballard and Fremont and is only the third of it’s kind in the entire country!
We want this gym to be expression of the community as well as a place for our coaches to teach – a place to organize and grow as a group in strength, skill, and confidence. An indoor training ground just for us that grows in complexity and challenges as more crazy obstacles are imagined and made
To kick off the gym’s opening we’re hosting a big clinic/open training/potluck/fundraising event on Oct 24th to introduce the local parkour community, our academy students, and all of their families to the awesome space and our plans for it!
Here are the event details: When Saturday, October 24th from 12pm to 9pm Where 4216 6th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107
Fundraising goal:
$5,000
Schedule:
12pm – 1:30pm Kids Introductory Clinic
1:30pm – 3pm Adults Introductory Clinic
3pm – 5pm Open Gym: A chance to play and explore the facility with the supervision of Parkour Visions coaches.
5pm – 9pm Dinner! Potluck if you can. Bring food and drinks (no soda please), see our plans for the gym, and get to the know the parkour community.
Update: We just barely missed this by 0.1% !! Thanks for all of your votes!
I’ve been watching the sustainable clothing company Nau ever since they first sent one of their employees up to Seattle for a story on the female parkour scene way back in v1 days. I was impressed with their dedication to giving back they built into every faucet of the company and the amount of great local giving they did (especially back in the beginning of their partners for change program).
So when I noticed them launching their first community grant I enthusiastically jumped in feet first and have already hit the ground running so to speak. Through the awesome help of the American Parkour community we’re already almost at the 100 vote minimum mark before this post is finished! APK has been so fast to action and giving in fact that we’re finalizing a potentially fantastic relationship with them shortly (more on that later).
We need your vote!
If we win we’ll receive $10,000 to put towards our own training center for our academy classes and Jump Washington outreach program, and all we need to be considered is a place in the publicly voted top 5.
There’s 293 other groups in the running and voting ends August 31st so please visit the link below and give us a high rating (5 stars)! More info on helping spread this campaign and win the grant in our resource doc.
Back in June we helped bring 8 of the coolest Seattle photographers together for a quick photoshoot at Gasworks Park of some of our instructors and younger students.
The idea was that any photos coming out of it would be Creative Commons licensed and cool for noncommercial use by the nonprofit. That way we get some awesome photos to use on the website and in printed materials (with attribution of course), and they get to shoot with some awesome traceurs and build their portfolio.
After launching our Parkour Visions outreach program through the fundraising on GlobalGiving we decided just to change the whole name over as it’s a better fit for our organization than the painfully long Pacific Northwest Parkour Association (more on that later).
The problem is that every bit of time we have right is focused on running the outreach programs (which we’re considering calling the Jump Washington project) and finding our own gym space for our regular academy classes. A redesign of the web site just hasn’t been possible.
Rafe got tired of that though and created the amazing logo you see above Consider this an open call for any graphic designers who want to volunteer and work with us on a new logo!
This spring, some of our board members made a trip to Texas to train with other national leaders and the amazing SA crew. Much training and jubilation ensued! Some was even caught on tape, and edited by Jereme Sanders of Texas Parkour. Look for guest appearances by Tyson Cecka, Brandee Laird, and Janine Cundy.
Some excellent news since our last update! What started as a side project from Janine working with the Spruce Street Teen Crises Center has expanded to a relationship with New Futures serving low-income apartment complexes, the Lincoln Center public after school program, and one or two other groups who are interested in using parkour teachings to improve the lives of those who could definitely use it. This has inspired us to change our name to Parkour Visions and here’s an example from an email I just received for another potential program:
So, we’re trying to think of ways to make our program “not just another program” that the kids participate in and then forget about when they go back to their own environments and personal lives: We want to inspire them. We want them to find their own inspiration inside of themselves. We want to give them hope. We want them to make their own hope. We want to give them tools like social skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, and conflict resolution skills…and we want them to learn these skills without even realizing it through enrichingly fun and awesome activities!!
LIKE PARKOUR.
We were hoping on being able to use the profits from our general classes to fund these types of reduced cost or free outreach programs, but while the classes are growing rapidly they’re not to that point yet (we’re hoping to move into our space this month which will help).
So we reached out to the parkour community by teaming up with AmericanParkour (more on that later) and entered into a fundraising competition on the excellent GlobalGiving site to subsidize the cost for future programs. That was near the beginning of last month…and it worked We’ve raised over $4,500 with your help so far, earned a permanent place on the GlobalGiving website, and are already being featured in another competition this month for sports organizations called Ready, Set, GIVE.
We’re very excited but have a crazy amount of work to do now, so the site may get a bit quiet We’ll make sure to update those who’ve donated through GG (even $10 helps!) as often as we can, and for everyone else – spread the word!
Project Spruce Street kicked off this week in Seattle, bringing parkour classes to at-risk youth in the heart of downtown!
Janine Cundy, Tyson Cecka, and Brandee Laird headed downtown on Thursday (May 28th) to kick start an initiative that will bring parkour classes to halfway houses every week, free of charge. Lessons focus on much more than just technique, delving into the importance and joy of pride in achievement, respect for training grounds and community, personal growth, and how to face fear responsibly.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to head this initiative,” Cundy said “these kids deserve to have some fun. Everybody should have something that they are proud they can do, and this gives that feeling to new kids every week. We hope that the people we get to know through these classes will look to the Washington Parkour and American Parkour communities as paths to furthering their knowledge of self, and parkour.”
The first class went better than expected, with lots of enthusiasm from the students and a surprising amount of natural talent. There was an immediate recognition of the need for this kind of program in the facility, and so we anticipate this to be a project that will be growing and changing for a while to come. For more information, please check out -Spruce Street’s website-
Is on the 9th this month and will be hosted at Northwest Crossfit’s Seattle location -link to class page- The focus is as always on introducing new people to the fundamentals of parkour and what you need to build an individual practice. There’s a limit of 30 people at the Seattle location so email classes@parkourvisions.org to reserve your spot and be sure to show up a bit early if you haven’t been before to fill out the release (or bring it with you!) Minors need to bring their parents or grab the form beforehand and get it filled out. Come prepared with clothing you can move in and a waterbottle! See you there!
Parkour Visions is hosting the first obstacle coursing challenge in the Puget Sound area. Athletes of all ages will run, jump, climb and clamber their way through three different courses; the athlete with the best overall time wins the challenge! Everyone confident in their parkour skills is welcome to sign up. Anyone interested in parkour or seeing skilled athletes demonstrate parkour in action are invited to come watch. Funds raised from this event will go to equipment for the gym and funding for our youth outreach programs. Come support the only parkour gym on the west coast, just sure to register here on our Facebook page!
