We had a huge amount of interest in the first ever Coach Europe so we decided to put together a little blog post and a much fuller debrief pack to give you a flavour of what went down.
In October 2019 we gathered local and international parkour coaches, students and local community members in Edinburgh, Scotland for two and a half days of sharing ideas and training together.
We wanted to provide a new space for people to make connections - with each other, with new coaching concepts and for some, with a new part of the world.
The idea came from a member of our local Edinburgh Parkour community and we are so happy to have brought this idea to life. Check out the video below from Eddy (who also runs the awesome Frane Clothing) and read on to learn more about, or just relive, Coach Europe 2019.
On Friday, day one, Edinburgh University Parkour Club organised a jam round some of the iconic and less known Edinburgh spots. This gave everyone a chance to get to know each other in the way we do best - exploring new and old spaces and challenges.
On day two Access Parkour, one of Coach Europe’s lead sponsors and Scotland’s biggest parkour coaching organisation, hosted coaches at their annual family fun day event. Local artist and parkour practitioner Ariella (who also designed our awesome Coach Europe t-shirt, made possible by sponsorship from Registers of Scotland) also ran a survey over Saturday asking coaches and students about their experience of classes and training, which you can read more about here.
Day three was the most structured part of the weekend. After a creative warm-up from Glasgow based artist, coach and Ukemi co-founder David Banks, the morning was taken up with 90 minute workshops from our three featured international coaches, followed by discussion and feedback on the workshops. Our three featured coaches were Natalia Boltukhova (who runs the Backsteps Forward Blog), Klo Fillion who trains with the ADD Academy in France and Brandon Sandén who coaches with Sweden’s Quality Movement.
The afternoon saw nine “mini sessions” from a wide range of coaches; some coaches led a tried and tested session, whereas others shared an experimental idea or even their very first coaching attempt. Short discussions were had after each mini session to feedback on the content and relevant ideas, with a longer discussion altogether at the end of the day.
International parkour events are always opportunities to learn new things and take them home, but we saw participants really welcome the focus on coaching at the first ever Coach Europe. Attendees spoke a lot over the weekend about how they wanted to make more time for reflection on their own coaching, the coaching in their community, and on coaching in general.
In the feedback discussions, we spoke about:
creating and managing healthy risk
keeping sessions engaging and varied
the balance of responsibility for learning between student and coach
making space for difference of all kinds, not just different physical abilities
the opportunities for learning from other disciplines
Most people agreed it was hard to find time between their regular commitments to have the conversations that were common at Coach Europe 2019. However, we were inspired to change that in future. We can all benefit from talking more to one another, as coaches and as students, and we hope that Coach Europe events will continue to contribute to this in 2020 and beyond.
There were so many lessons we learned from putting on Coach Europe 2019, but we’ll try to keep this part short! This was Parkour Outreach’s first ever event of this format so we’re really grateful to everyone who gave us feedback to help improve what we offer the wider parkour community. We’ve been able to test the idea, see it has value and learn from it. The fact that we had such an overwhelmingly positive response is thanks to everyone who participated in any way, big or small. The lessons here are a mix of the responses to our feedback survey and some reflections from us as organisers during or after Coach Europe 2019.
On the event itself, we learned that:
New ideas and connections were the most valuable part of the event: this was the most common piece of feedback from the survey. While future hosts can and should adapt the format of Coach Europe, we would like to see this networking element continue.
Communication is key: organisers should give more detailed information to everyone before and during the event.
Sunday’s format was most popular: participants cited elements of Sunday most often as their favourite part of the weekend.
The more the merrier: some extra volunteers over the weekend would be really useful to help with logistics and social media.
Attendees wanted to talk more: future hosts should consider increasing the number and type of discussions.
Thanks to everyone who made Coach Europe 2019 so special, including our brilliant sponsors Access Parkour, Daniel Lingard, Parkour Movement and Registers of Scotland. The full debrief pack also has detail on some of the individual workshops, more information on Ariella’s survey and links to all the people and organisations who were such a vital part of this event. You can check that out here. We can’t wait for Coach Europe 2020!
Were you lucky enough to attend the inaugural Coach Europe? What are you looking forward to in future years? Let us know below.