The Importance of Events and Jams
The situation with COVID has affected parkour training in many ways over 2020, and will continue to do so into 2021. But most noticeably – there has been a lack of community events and jams.
At the start of 2020, Parkour Outreach CIC had been gearing up to deliver Coach Europe 2020 and the European Art of Retreat 2020. There were many annual events to look forward to – Evry Move, 4TLOM, Rendezvous – just to name a few. There were also regular jams that would happen, whether on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis in different communities.
We believe that community events and jams are an important part of parkour for a number of reasons:
It provides a sense of community.
It brings people together.
It is an opportunity to share ideas and challenges with each other.
It is a chance to support each other to overcome challenges.
How have communities adapted?
The main restriction of the pandemic has been the lack of travel and also the inability to meet in large groups in person.
But how can we still get the benefits of community events and jams?
We have seen different communities being creative in using technology to continue the benefits of events and jams. We have highlighted a few of the approaches that we have seen below.
1) Online Classes/Jams
At the start of the pandemic, we saw many communities offering online classes and jams. These were a great way to keep people connected during some of the strictest lockdowns.
Esprit Concrete ran their Yamak style training online – people pushed themselves and each other to work hard for each session, and it brought together people from across the world!
2) Larger Events
But what about the larger events?
Most of these were cancelled, but the Finnish Parkour Association organised their annual Armageddon event virtually this year! The Association invited participants to sign up, train in their own local area, and send in clips of the session.
3) Daily Challenges
Whilst these are not technically events – they are a great way to keep people moving.
Edinburgh Parkour organised a Movement Advent Calendar – where members of the community contributed challenges to the calendar, and then a challenge was posted up for each day in December in the run up to Christmas!
It was a great opportunity to try each other’s challenges and share the experience, despite not being able to train in person.
4) Discussions
Finally, another dimension of events and jams are the discussions that end up taking place.
JimmytheGiant has organised a number of online discussions on a Discord server. These discussions have covered (1) how to build a career in parkour, and (2) old school parkour v new school parkour. The virtual nature of these events has allowed people from across the world to take part in these discussions.
There have also been a few podcasts that have grown through lockdown, such as Art of Retreat and Parkour Coach Companion. We’d recommend listening to these!
We’d love to hear from you!
Overall, the parkour communities have continued to overcome the challenges around COVID to bring the community together with events and jams that have taken place either virtually, or can take place locally for each practitioner.
We’d love to hear what you think about these approaches – could you bring some of the above events to your community? What other style of events are happening?
Get in touch and let us know!