Snippets from the Notebook

On Play

Play is not just an act of joy and pleasure but and exploration of our darker feelings; a space to also move to pain and sadness.

Play can let you experience your feelings and free you from living your feelings.

Questions Needing Answers

  • What does the normalization of parkour create/why is it important?
  • What can we do as individual practitioners to further the normalization of play in public space?
  • How do spaces / places / communities permit or restrict individual movement?
  • How do these permission/restrictions change based on identity, location.
  • How can spaces be redesigned to be more permissive? How can laws or societal patterns be shifted to be more permissive?
  • What can the emergence & practice of parkour or these types of interactive urban space activities (like parcon?) reveal about the deficiencies of our cities/spaces?

Whats the body in regards to mobility?
Something you own, that needs to be improved, maintained, fixed. Emotions, history as we relate to the spaces we live in. We interact with those spaces different due to those emotions/history? Our bodies are not neutral; processing truama/emotions through movement.

When we turn our bodies into property, we empty them of movement.

When we practice parkour, we dont just ineract with the architecture but the history there. We’re going to have different relationships to the place and we’re going to be moving with the architecture differently. How is there mobility for moving emotion, trauma, history? Whos history is illuminated through design?

We are always projecting things onto our architecture.

On Authenticity

Staging Conversations: I can test out versions of myself and pick the one that is most authentic and with greatest integrity

On Relationship Building

How can we move from the transactional to the transformative? I want reject consumerism and experience communion with my fellow humans; to move from the indifferent to the interactive.

Public Parkour Park Roadmap Series

Late Updated; 7/29/2020

The Public Parkour Park Roadmap is a free guide and series of articles to support individuals and communities in their efforts to build inter-generational play-spaces and parkour parks in their neighborhoods.

Over the last 20 years parkour, movnat, and other forms of alternative play-based movement practices have dramatically risen in interest and participation, drawing in not only children, but teens, adults, and seniors. However, in that same time there hasn’t been a notable increase in public play spaces for these older populations.

Parkour Parks, natural playscapes, and alternative play spaces can add immense value to a community — especially when designed to ensure inter-generational all-ability participation. Providing free access to spaces and tools that support physical and mental well being supports the growth of a whole and healthy society.

This guide is here to serve as a jumping off point, providing insight into the various stages of grassroots park development–starting with advocacy within your town or city through design, build, and long term community-care.

Overview of the Roadmap

As articles are released, I will update the links here.

Stage 1: Community Building & Partnership

You establish and develop the local and regional community through public or private programming. You build strategic partnerships with government agencies, community organizations, and companies, connecting them to your vision and the value of this type of project.

Stage 2: Public Advocacy, Education, and Normalization

You raise public awareness of the value of parkour, play, and alternative athletics in your community through civic participation, public speaking, and participation in larger community-building activities.

  • Public Advocacy & Misconceptions
  • Meet the Opposition
  • Key Talking Points – Why Intergenerational Playspaces? Why Parkour Parks?
  • Reaching Your Larger Community
  • Connecting To Local Government
  • Safety and Liability
  • Planning A Campaign
  • Putting Together Your First Presentation
  • Against the word ‘Playground’.
  • Temporary vs Permanent Park Builds
  • Temporary Park Build Considerations

Stage 3: Space and Funding

You identify potential sites and site partners, draw up a proposed budget, and research funding sources.

Stage 4: Design & Construction

You hire an architecture, engineering, or design consulting firm to collaborate with your community leaders to create a vision. You work with your partners, site owners, and contractors to build.

  • Precedence – And why you need it
  • Essential Parkour Park Characteristics
  • Essential Playground Characteristics
  • Choosing Materials
  • Is it a Park or a Playground or a Public Space?
  • Why You Should Hire A Professional
  • Choosing a Design Professional
  • Considering Accessibility

Stage 5: Long Term Community Caretaking

You commit to and create ways to ensure the long term use and health of the park. A park that is well used and loved will continue to receive caretaking and maintenance.

  • Why Multi-Community Investment is Critical to Success
  • Connecting the Community to your Park
  • Activating the Park through Programming Partners
  • Sustaining Community Involvement
  • Leave No Trace Together
  • Organizing Community Events 101

Project Footnotes

Schedule
This project went live February 2020 and is on track for 1 article a month.

Geographic Bias
This guide is written from a North American perspective on risks, funding, and community behaviors. However many of these articles will be useful for understanding project processes regardless of location.

Attribution
This guide was inspired by the public skateboard park development guide, which I highly recommend since skateboarders and parkour practitioners face similar issues.

Living Project
This is a living project that will be modified, updated, and expanded when appropriate.

Use Professionals
This is an experiential guide, not a prescriptive set of rules. Always consult with legal and design professionals familiar with your local code, permitting, site, and funding requirements and restrictions. Every town, city, state, and country is different.

About Me

I am a non-profit director, partnership manager, and designer with 10 years experience leading strategic planning for community organizations, consulting on parkour design-built projects, managing major cross-sector partnerships, and facilitating professional development in the parkour community. I have traveled extensively and studied public spaces and playgrounds across the world, oversaw 50+ temporary playground art installations, and continue providing smaller communities with individualized support advocating for the creation and preservation of parkour environments.

I also hold a professional degree in Architecture from Syracuse University

The Play Gap – Inequity in Play & Sports Participation

“Play is a precursor to intellectual freedom, it empowers individuals with agency and voice. Play is a matter of human dignity.”

You are probably familiar with the term “word gap” – linking children’s vocabulary skills to their economic backgrounds. Well how about the ‘Play Gap?’

Access to opportunities, time, and safe spaces to play are influenced by socio-economic status (class) (as well as by race, gender, and ability (able-ism). Low income children are more likely to live in neighborhoods with limited designated play space, experience higher pressure than their affluent peers to perform academically (at the expense of their play), and have parental time, permission, and encouragement to play.

There are many reasons I think Parkour can uniquely address the major obstacles facing participation for low-income youth. The fact that a child can self-direct and self-challenge and explore in whatever spaces they are afforded, without need for equipment, fees, or team mates, is unlike any other sport.

Furthermore, Parkour breaks outside the rigidities of traditional ‘sport’, with fixtures of rules and competition as the driving force, and allows for actual PLAY–an experience often lost in most sports as participation advances with age.

Dont Retire, Kid – Try Parkour!

2015 Playground Installation, Governors Island, Caitlin Pontrella, Jesse Danger, Nikkie Zanevsky

❗️62% of kids quit organized team sports by age 11 according to a recent study conducted by the Aspen Institute Project Play with the Utah State University Families in Sports Lab.

The Aspen Institute Project Play is running a new campaign called Don’t Retire, Kid. On their launch page they wonder aloud as to why kids are really leaving sports.

Are we really wondering why?

A quick read of Until it Hurts or The Most Expensive Game In Town, two books by Mark Hyman, reveal just how expensive sport participation is… and I’m not just talking $$$.

Maybe we need to start looking at alternatives to traditional competitive team sports? Maybe we need to start calling out the toxic competitive environments, overemphasis on athletic elitism, and soaring costs for participating? Maybe we need to value more highly healthy self expression, civic participation, and community engagement in our practice? 

This is just one reason I love Parkour and play. They are fundamentally non competitive, focused on the development of individual identity and community relationship. There is a low barrier to access–financially, physically, personally. In our programs at Parkour Visions we encourage students to develop their own style and pursue movement that feels healthy, we support collaborative learning and gameplay, and encourage leadership, responsibility, and environmental stewardship. Children or adults–there is another way.

Sports can be more than besting your opponent, earning a college scholarship, or losing that next 10 pounds. If you want to see more people (of ALL AGES) stay and play, we need to be looking to play an infinite game–one where ‘winning’ is being healthy, happy, and engaged.

What is Parkour Vision?

What is parkour vision? Its walking through the world and, instead of asking ‘what is allowed?’ You ask ‘what is possible?’

This is a subtle but incredibly profound shift in perception and mindset. You learn to focus on creating new possibilities and writing your own story, instead of listening to the limitations set by others.

And… As your vision grows, you will begin to see opportunities to challenge the status quo in all areas of your personal life, work, and community.

-C.Pontrella

Movement For All: A Call to Courageous Action

For too long, we have treated play as a luxury that kids, as well as adults, could do without. But the time has come for us to recognize why play is worth defending: It is essential to leading a happy and healthy life. 


— David Elkind

Did you know that the average american is most physically active at age 6, and by 19, about as sedentary as a 60 year old? Over the last ten years there has been a steady decline in participation in sports and physical activity among youth as well as the rise of obesity among teens and adults. Add to that — National data reveals a startling 30% of adults do not engage in any leisure time physical activity , with less than half meeting or exceeding recommendations.

To sum it up: As most people grow up they are either losing or leaving behind play and physical activity.

However, evidence clearly supports that movement and play are critical to life long, whole human health not just for children, but teens, adults, and seniors as well. Beyond the physical benefits of strength, mobility, and dexterity, participation supports overall mental health. It has been shown to improve cognitive performance and learning, reduce the impact of stress, and support social and emotional development. It nurtures our confidence, curiosity, creativity, and sense of control. It brings us joy.

So if play is so important — why do we stop? The answer to that question is complex, and presents the problem we, as a community, need to solve together.

The Problem: Barriers to Play

There are major barriers to accessing and participating in physical activity and play. These include issues related to time, cost, location, and an individual social, emotional, and cultural context. To summarize a few of the largest, most robust issues:

COST
Inactivity has been shown to be directly linked to household income.
 Rising costs of equipment, league fees, gym memberships, and the costs associated with accessingquality coaching and learning tools all threaten participation.

TIME 
We live in a non-stop world
. Juggling work, school, and social schedules alongside long commuting times and other obligations often prevents us from fitting in time for play. Whats worse, we keep finding ways to cut play out. By 2017, over 30,000 schools in America eliminated recess to make more time for academics.

PHYSICAL ACCESS
Even if we have the money and time, physical access is the final hurdle.As the distance required to access play resources increases (fields, equipment, gyms, parks), participation declines — transportation is directly linked back to time and money. Additionally, many schools and cities have limited programs and services, making them fewer and farther in between.

SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL, CULTURAL ISSUES
Every individual brings a complex landscape of social, emotional, and cultural experiences that block participation
. Having negative experiences with sports and PE in youth, limiting stereotypes around gender, race, and status, fear of discrimination, competition, and self-consciousness are just a few.

…And The Seriousness of Life

In additional to all these barriers, the largest obstacle that we all face and must overcome is that as a society we are quick to devalue play. We hold this idea that life is serious, and that we need to prepare ourselves to deal with the seriousness of life. We must work and produce and constantly improve upon our human capital potential — which seemingly leaves no room for ‘unproductive’ pursuits.

How many of you have heard discouraging little phrases such as “quit playing around and get back to work?” Employees are constantly guilted into working late hours, students wear their lack of sleep like a badge of honor, and (financial, social) rewards are granted to those who work at the expense of all else.

This perception that play has limited value, combined with any of the barriers above, is a perfect recipe for a sedentary body and sick mind. As Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, expressed: the opposite of play isn’t work, it’s depression.

Our Pledge: Movement For All

Brene Brown wrote, “It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.”

#MovementForAll is a declaration that play is a human right, necessary for whole health — both for the individual and the collective.

It is a commitment to everyone having access to lifelong, playful movement and community.

It is a call to courageous action, and a promise we make together: to teach, build, and share an integrated path we discovered that fulfills this commitment — that path being parkour.

Depending on who you asked, Parkour is a sport, an art, a discipline. Practice involves running, climbing, jumping, swinging, crawling, rolling. Players create challenges for themselves in the environments they find using nothing more than their bodies, their imaginations, and, if available, their friends. It involves facing fears and learning to take intelligent risks, as well as building resiliency through physical and mental training.

Parkour is play grown-up.

And, when compared to conventional sports and outlets for play, parkour culture and philosophy can provide the necessary elements for life-long participation: Radical Inclusion, Resourceful Generosity, and Evolving Practice.

  • Radical Inclusion. Every ‘body’ is not only invited to participate but celebrated — any ability, size, color, age. Our community strives for a space of progressive practice, respectful language, and accountability. We reject gate-keeping and body-shaming. We use movement to create unity among diverging perspectives, for movement is a language we all speak.
  • Resourceful Generosity. We crowd-source solutions and educational tools, organize free classes and events, and foster leadership among all students. We are Go Getters and Go Givers, creating and sharing so that the collective can get stronger. Together we support one another in overcoming the financial, physical, and cultural obstacles that so commonly prevent access to other activities.
  • Evolving Practice. Our play needs to grow up with us if we are to play for life. Parkour ensures lifelong participation and community by giving people permission to change their practice as they grow. From exploration to competition to maintenance and back, from strength to mobility to balance and beyond. There is no fixed set of movements that must be achieved. There is no ageing out.

Move Your Way, Move With Us

So this is my call to action. I’m giving you a path to a life in play. Stand up and move. Move your way, move with us, and help us bring movement to all.

Over the last year I have been working closely with Parkour Visions, a non-profit with national initiatives to combine those values above with programs and services designed to break barriers of time, cost, and physical access. We are trying to get play back into the every day by:

These are just a few ways we have dreamed up getting more play into the everyday. However this change needs us working together if we are to create large scale cultural and societal impact. It needs new ideas, enthusiasm, and time… And, most of all, it needs you — you, choosing to show up and and be a stand for a world that embraces play as a positive, integral element of leading a whole, human life.


Help us make #MovementForAll a reality.

In 2019, Parkour Visions established the Movement For All Fund, dedicated to supporting programs and services that are breaking barriers and building bridges to play through parkour. In February, every donation is being matched up to $25,000 — that means whatever you give will be doubled! You can make a difference, and it can start here.

(PS. Always looking for collaborators — reach out!)

Financial, physical, and cultural barriers to participation.

On top of all these, there is the largest obstacle that we all face and must overcome: We as adults, and a society, are quick to devalue play. We hold this idea that life is serious, and that we need to prepare ourselves to deal with the seriousness of life. We must work and produce and constantly improve upon our human capital potential — which seemingly leaves no room for ‘unproductive’ play past childhood.

How many of you have heard or have been guilty of uttering discouraging little phrases such as “quit playing around,” or “get back to work”? It’s deeply embedded in our culture.

…And this perception combined with any of the barriers above is a perfect recipe for a sedentary and less fulfilling life. As Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, expressed: the opposite of play isn’t work, it’s depression.

The Pledge: Movement For All

Brene Brown wrote, “It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.”

#MovementForAll is a declaration that play is a human right, necessary for whole health — both for the individual and the collective.

It is a commitment to everyone having access to lifelong, playful movement and community.

It is a call to courageous action, and a promise we make together: to teach, build, and share the path we discovered to fulfilling this commitment — that path being parkour.

For those of you unfamiliar, Parkour is a sport, …an art, …a discipline. Practice involves running, climbing, jumping, swinging, crawling, rolling. Practitioners create challenges for themselves, in the environments they find, using nothing more than their bodies and their imaginations. It involves facing fears and learning to take intelligent risks, as well as building resiliency through physical and mental training.

When compared to conventional sports, parkour culture also uniquely offers the potential for Radical Inclusion, Resourceful Generosity, and Evolving Practice.

  • Radical Inclusion. Every ‘body’ is not only invited to participate but celebrated — any ability, size, color, age. Come as you are. We offer a space of progressive practice, respectful language, and accountability. We reject gate-keeping and body-shaming. We believe in using movement to create unity among diverging perspectives, because movement is a language we all speak.
  • Resourceful Generosity. We crowd-source solutions and educational tools, organize free classes and events, and foster new leaders. We are Go Getters and Go Givers, creating and sharing so that the collective can get stronger. Together we support one another in overcoming the financial, physical, and cultural obstacles that so commonly prevent access to other activities.
  • Evolving Practice. Our play needs to grow up with us if we are to play for life. We ensure lifelong participation and community by giving people permission to change their practice as they grow. From exploration to competition to maintenance and back. There is no ageing out.

Not sure if Parkour is for you? Read why you should consider picking it up…

Move Your Way, Move With Us

To that end, I believe in combining these values with programs and approaches focused on breaking barriers and increasing access to parkour and play for all.

So this my call to you, to take action, to create for yourself and others a space where we can play for now and for life. How will you help create #MovementForAll in your city?


Join my tribe dedicated to #MovementForAll: Parkour Visions.

PKV is a non-profit focused on ensuring everyone has a path to playful movement and community through parkour! Donate to our #MovementForAll Fund to support free and affordable programs and support services promoting play, parkour, coaching, and leadership.

Originally posted February 6, 2019 on Medium

Highlights from The Roots of Sport→

Unless you are a part of the niche sport of cricket, this is likely the first time you are hearing of Mike Brearley–professional cricketer, writer, and psychoanalysis. Two of his books are on my current reading list–The Art of Captaincy and On Form.

Brearley himself is an inspiration figure, described as having ‘a degree in people,’ he took on the helm of leadership and captaincy, not just for his team but for the community that he wished to see. He did not shy away from speaking his mind and taking a political stand against apartheid, and wrote extensively on the value of sport.

Recently I came across this incredible article On The Roots of Sport, penned for the British Pscyhoanalytical Society. As I try to pull excerpts to highlight I am resisting copy-pasting a sizeable chunk, so I highly recommend giving it a read (5 minutes).

On The Value of Sports

“[Through Sports] the child and the adult have to learn to cope with the emotional ups and downs of victory and defeat, success and failure. They – we – gradually manage to keep going against the odds, to struggle back to form, to recognize the risks of complacency. We have to learn to deal with inner voices telling us we are no good, and with voices telling us we’re wonderful. In sport the tendencies to triumph when we do well and to become angry or depressed at doing badly are often strong; we have to find our own ways of coping with them. Arrogance and humiliation have to be struggled against, whilst determination, proper pride and good sportsmanship are struggled towards. “

“Sport calls too for a subtle balancing of planning and spontaneity, of calculation and letting go, of discipline and freedom.”

” …having disciplined ourselves, having set ourselves according to the situation of the game, we then have to let ourselves go, trusting to our craftsmanship, skill and intuitive responsiveness, without further interference from the conscious mind. “

” The moments for the sportsman when body and mind are at one, when we are completely concentrated and completely relaxed, aware of every relevant detail of the surroundings but not obsessed or hyper-sensitive to any set of them, confident without being over-confident, aware of dangers without being over-cautious – such rare states of mind are akin to being in love. They involve a marriage between the conscious control mentioned above with the allowing of a more unconscious creativity through the body’s knowledge. “

On The Value of Movement

Frederick James Wilfred, 1955

“For those to whom sport doesn’t appeal, it seems futile, pointless. They remember hours of misery at compulsory school games on cold sporting fields. They were perhaps physically awkward, and picked last.

Yet every small child, before self-doubt, and invidious comparison with other children, gets a grip, takes pleasure in his or her bodily capacities and adroitness. […] Walking, jumping, dancing, catching, kicking, climbing, splashing, using an implement as a bat or racquet – all these offer a sense of achievement and satisfaction.

[…]

Moreover, this development in coordination is part of the development of a more unified self. Instead of being subject, as babies, to more or less random, stimulus-response movements of our limbs, we learn to act in the world according to central intentions and trajectories. We begin to know what we are doing and what we are about.

On Sport vs Play

“Sport proper starts to emerge when competition with others plays a more central role alongside the simpler delight in physicality. ‘I can run faster than you, climb higher, wrestle you to the floor’. “

On Competition and Human Nature

“If human beings were not combative no one would have invented sport. But if human beings were not also cooperative neither team nor individual games would have come into existence. “

“The Latin etymology of both ‘rival’ and ‘compete’ reflect this fact: rivalis meant ‘sharing the same stream or river bank’, competens meant ‘striving together with’, ‘agreeing together’, as in ‘competent’. “

Sport & Self-Expression

” For many people otherwise inclined to be inhibited or self-conscious, sport offers a unique opportunity for self-expression and spontaneity. Within a framework of rules and acceptable behaviour, sportspeople can be whole-hearted. Such people – including me – owe sport a lot; here we begin to find ourselves, to become the selves that we have the potential to be.

Play is Powerful! Bridging Loneliness Through Active Intergenerational Communities→

Why is #play powerful? Because it can connect people through time and across generations. A kid and a senior can share a memory over a streetgame played in youth and for a moment connect as humans, glimpse into a possible future and the forgotten past.

Intergenerational community is rare but incredibly powerful when it comes to creating possibilities, vision, health, hope, and joy.

Parkour is one of those unique spaces that can truly support intergen community. I look forward to the next 10, 20, 50+ years of movement and play in my life, and to be able to both watch and be apart of helping guide culture as our diverse leaders age up and new ones emerge. I am so inspired by Julie Angel s messaging around positive aging, the parkour over 40 fb group, the growth of PKMove / playful aging / Forever Young programs (including one we are doing with PKV in 2019) and the numerous practitioners (some who became best friends, my mentors, My students) I’ve met over the years through events and practice.

And mostly I am so so grateful to be apart of a sport / discipline / community that I can be apart of no matter how old I get, no matter how my body changes, no matter the place I am, no matter the money I make, no matter obstacles I face. There are so very few legitimate, meaningful communities and outlets like that in life–spaces without limitations or rules around participation.

It truly inspires me to ask more of my self, my body, my practice, my city, and my life, because I see others, older and younger, doing the same. And as a person, I more deeply understand my value as a human in this larger ecosystem–as a student/teacher, as a learner/leader–evolving, maturing, transforming.

We are neither young or old, we are human! Let’s play together.