I created another thread about this topic a little while ago, and urban cat and I discussed it more in-depth today, but increasingly I see the benefits of having a centralized parkour association for Oklahoma.
The benefits would be numerous, but here are just a few:
1. Unification: It can be difficult to find this forum, and even more difficult to find other traceurs on your own. The Oklahoma Parkour Association would serve as a unifying organization that would allow traceurs to meet with other traceurs, train, provide resources, and provide teaching/training to those who are new to parkour.
2. Public Relations: To those who are unfamiliar with parkour, it can come across as a "dare-devil's sport," an "extreme sport," or it can even leave some thinking we are running from the law! Needless to say, these assumptions by the public hurt parkour's image and increase the chances that parkour could become the next skateboarding: prohibited nearly everywhere, with a bad reputation. Oklahoma Parkour Association would serve as a public relations contact point for media, businesses, and other concerned individuals/groups. We would also actively work to seek good quality publicity from local sources.
3. Community Benefit Programs: Urban Cat and I discussed in the future possibly having community benefit programs such as a youth program similar to the one featured in the Jump Westminster program, community clean-up/repair days where traceurs could choose an area and pick up litter and things to set a good example and to better our/parkour's image to the public.
4. Training/Teaching: One of my goals through the Oklahoma Parkour Association would be eventually to create actual classes with a set curriculum, meaning interested people could come and actually learn parkour in a structured environment through which they could measure their progress. As someone who is currently learning parkour, I know how difficult it is to learn on my own, and even learning with other traceurs can sometimes be hard if there is no set goals/benchmarks etc. I think creating a parkour class where people could come to learn how to do parkour efficiently and safely would be very beneficial.
urban cat and I discussed these and more ideas today, but we would like the participation of other traceurs in Oklahoma.
If you would like to be involved in the beginnings of Oklahoma's first and currently only official state-wide parkour association, please post here by Tuesday, August 7.We are currently working on setting a date for a get-together meeting to discuss the association, our goals, and how to put it in motion, so any dates that wouldn't work would be helpful to post here as well.
We plan on having this first meeting sometime within the next week or two, since people will be starting school and we want to go ahead and get things in motion so that they'll have enough momentum that we won't have trouble getting together and starting it later.
Again, if you are interested, please post here by
August 7.After our initial meeting, we will have a public meeting in which any interested person in Oklahoma can come and learn more about parkour, the beginnings of Oklahoma Parkour Association, and how they can start learning. We will talk more about that later, but for right now, please make a spot on your calendars in the next week or two to get together and talk!
I have set up a quick, temporary website until we can get one done that is more professional. For more information, go to
www.freewebs.com/oklahomaparkour .
Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you all!
