So this one actually started back in April 2010 when Jason Matten from Trace was working alongside playground manufacturers HAGS to create a Parkour Park in Newhaven near Brighton. Being the first park the company were building it was acting as a test to see how the council and local area responded to it. Once the park had been commissioned and the plans agreed on Jason asked us to film the “building of” and opening so that the video could then be shown to other councils.

Over the course of the park being built we travelled down to Brighton to capture the changes of the area as time went on, its very impressive how fast a digger can tear down a 10 foot fence!

Unfortunately the opening day was ruined by some pretty persistent wind and rain but we soldiered on anyway. (None of this footage actually made the final cut!)

A few weeks later we visited again and were graced by sunshine, also the presence of a lot more free runners from many parts of the UK such as Phil Doyle from Cambridge, this was great as we could really capture how diverse peoples movement was inside the twisting metalwork of the park. From here the video was left at a loose end due to Jason being ill for a long period of time but we reunited in early 2011 to head to the park one last time to pick up some interviews with our newly acquired sound equipment. The benefit of this was that the locals such as Callum and Sacha Powell really had had a chance to adapt to the environment and were throwing out some huge things they couldn’t do a year earlier. We also got the opportunity to interview Liv a female freerunner based in Redhill who has been practicing Parkour since the early days of the sport in the UK.

I dont really have much else to say in the blog unfortunately aside from the fact that I love the park and really hope we will get more around the UK. As much as its always good to train in a proper urban environment to have a place where its possible to train a lot of bar work is awesome!

Also notice the improvement in our filming from start to finish…oh how we have learnt over the last year!

Thanks to John Lucas for the initial Indent and Steve Collins for the photos.