Parkour? What’s that?

I watched a thing on tv about a year ago called

Jump London

and immediately became interested in watching skateboarders and started thinking of them as being more than just people who wore baggy trousers and got in my way.

I know Parkour is not the same as skateboarding but both activities tend to attract young people into activities where they can use and explore cityscapes differently.They can think about themselves in the environment in creative ways. After seeing the programme it made me think about cities in new ways as being places where people follow rules in the ways they use space and behaving very conventionally - usually without realising. Freerunning, or Parkour, (as well as skateboarding) challenge such conventions. Seeing a freerunner in action reminds you of dreams you have had, where you can effortlessly move across spaces and can challenge the natural laws of physics.

There was apparently a follow up programme on tv the other night,

Jump Britain,

which gained the sport further credibility, at least amongst these people as well as these. Here we see the Internet as a forum for exchange about other media and as a way of sharing information as soon as it is received. Perhaps here we see the re-occurrence of internet activity as it happened after the first UK Freerunning/parkour broadcast.
The BBC has this article about freerunning, about a chap called Deedi who is very good indeedy at the sport.

The Internet has played an important role apparently in getting more people involved, as did the tv programme

Jump London

. Young people all over the UK were so inspired by seeing a bunch of French youths risking their groins (ou cous)leaping across the metropolis that they tried their luck at surfing. Surfing the web of course, looking for the word Parkour, which they, as the story has it, could not spell. So instead this site has been the mine of information which drew lucky when they used the words freerunning as well as parlour on their homepage. That is something very interesting about how search engines can impact on cultural change; at how liteacy skills can create or inhibit opportunities.

And pages like this are now destined to do the same I suppose.

In the meantime, check out the pictures here and here

And listen you surfin’ guys and dolls out there, ‘Take care.’


This post is with thanks to Lizzi, ever wise and wonderful-;