2018 Annual Report
We are pleased to release our 2018 Annual Report! You can download this small pdf right here!
In 2018 Parkour Visions faced huge challenges—and made huge leaps forward. The lost of the gym at the very end of 2017 severely cut back our program reach and offerings--but only for a short period of time. Though we started the year with only two classes a week running by the end of the year we had over 25! 90% of our programming was brand new — and ended up directly impacting youth and adult practitioners, coaches, business owners, and enthusiasts from over 30 Seattle neighborhoods, 35 states, and 5 countries!
EDUCATION
Our educational programming has always been top priority at Parkour Visions, and continued to be the guiding force in where and how we grew. We were committed to providing high quality learning experiences for students of all ages and dimensions of diversity—and make renewed effort to see our programs in under-served communities.
This was only possible by forging several new, major partnerships with King County, the City of Seattle Parks, Seattle Public Schools, and the Associated Recreation Council. We ran classes in almost two dozen neighborhoods, ran our very first STEAM+(M)ovement camps, and began building class communities around training approaches--low impact, power, and games.
We also were awarded a $50,000 grant to provide free afterschool programming for at-risk youth in South Seattle. We provided 22 scholarships and introduced parkour to 450 new students. Finally we ran our first ever STEAM education camps, bringing science, engineering, technology, and art learning projects to our parkour camps in creative ways—from playground designing to photography to anatomy and art.
DESIGN
The excitement around designing outdoor parks, public spaces, and playgrounds to support parkour and intergenerational play is continually growing. We consulted on 7 projects, from fitness paths to gyms to complete outdoor parks. New concepts to new construction!
Members of our team also were invited to share their viewpoints and ideas on several major stages. Our Design Director Colin MacDonald spoke both at TEDxSeattle and Ignite! Our Executive Director Caitlin Pontrella presented to the AIA in NY and attended CityLab as an advocate for Parkour Visions.
COMMUNITY
We made huge efforts to continue to connect and support both the local and national community.
When Caitlin joined Parkour Visions she brought with her the International Art of Retreat Conference as well as the North American Womens Parkour Gathering. These two international events, which now fall under the caretaking of Parkour Visions, were able to achieve massive reach. AOR directly reached 95 leaders and coaches from 25 states and 4 countries and the Womens Gathering had over 80 women attend from 25 different states and canadian provinces.
PKV also stepped up to help bring to life the Sebastian Foucan Tour, connecting american cities with to one of the historical figures in parkour. We also ran a scaled back version of the community Classic, inviting for the first time the other regional parkour companies and community groups to participate in the organizing of the event.
Finally, in May we relaunched monthly womens meetups and beginner jams, and almost every week of the year offered a free class open to the public.
Into 2019 - #MovementForAll
We are so excited to look ahead to 2019 and invite all of you to share your ideas, hopes, dreams for the ways in which we grow. We are of course still hunting for a gym space and strategizing our next move, but in the mean time we also want to make sure we are still bringing parkour out into the world.
Check out our MovementForAll campaign to learn more about how we want to make sure that everyone has a path to finding their play.