Spiral Freeruns Own Gym

Spiral Freerun CIC 

History

Spiral Freerun first formed in 18/03/2012 as a group of teenagers just training and making videos together. The team had the eventual goal/dream of being able to work within parkour and eventually run our own parkour facility. in 2014, Spiral Freerun had the opportunity to coach in Gt Denham Primary School in Bedford, before proceeding to organised workshops at the Higgins Museum in 2015 and eventually forming as a company in 2016. The transition is evident from the videos we have published on our YouTube channel, where you will see the transformation in direction as an organisation.

We started our journey coaching at Bedford Academy, Kings Oak Primary school and Bedford International Athletic Stadium where we would provide one session a week at each venue. We began to save the funds received from the services we provided to purchase our own equipment. For the first year of operating, we were using the equipment that was owned by the schools/ leisure centres we worked within, and so we used this time to grow our name as a professional organisation and continue to grow our audience, equipment range and develop the structure of the company. We spent the majority of 2017-2019 moving from venue to venue, as our client base was growing and so was the need for additional space/storage, unfortunately many of the venues we resided in could not provide this. In 2019, after moving venue a total of 3 times already, we made the transfer into Trinity Arts & Leisure which has been our home since. It wasn't until 2021 where we decided to make the jump from part time (running just 4 classes per week) to full time, running between 15-23 classes per week. It was up until this point that all members of the team were working multiple other jobs whilst maintaining their focus on Spiral Freerun. To make the jump from part time to full time, was a huge commitment from everyone as this was a make or break for our company.

In June 2021, we made many changes to the companies structure and successfully achieved CIC status, which has opened the doors for the demographic we can reach and allowed us to cater for a much wider audience with the help and support of organisations, charities and local councils.

Introduction

Spiral Freerun CIC is a community based club that specialise in teaching parkour and Freerunning to members of the local community. Spiral currently has over 370 members, including varied ages and ethnicities, with classes currently operating inside of trinity arts and leisure centre. We are proud to have a highly skilled and diverse team made up of varying ages and ethnicities (African/Caribbean, Polish, British and mixed ethnicities) with a combined 40 years of specialist experience.

Our aims are to:

• Improve the physical/mental health of participants, by showing students they can overcome physical obstacles and challenges. building self confidence, strength, and having fun learning fundamental movements.
  
  
• Make parkour classes more inclusive and accessible to the local community by working with local groups and charities to create classes that are more financially accessible. Recently we have worked with two charities (PLACE & Fun 4 young people) to create an inviting inclusive class and community for both home educated children and children that the F4YP charity work with.
• Create a welcoming and safe environment to learn parkour in, with the help of our highly trained coaches and purpose built equipment.

Spiral Freerun offers a wide range of classes and services to the local community for ages 4+ ranging from junior classes, video tutorials, and clothing production. Everything at Spiral is proudly done in house, we build our own equipment, produce our own clothing and plan events/performances in converted workspaces in our own homes.

we offer:

• Minis parkour classes for ages 4-6 - This class is adapted to the younger age range as an introduction to parkour and how to practice safely. With its own unique grading system

• Beginner/intermediate/advance skill level class for ages 6-16 - Parkour classes that are available to all experience levels. where we will teach you a range of Flip/Wall/Ground/Bar/Vault movements
• Squad classes - A more intense class for our highly skilled students to progress their tricks and movement towards outdoor environments.

• Adult classes - We also offer 14+ classes so that our students can continue their learning and so that adults are able to learn parkour too.
• Accessible classes - We are currently working with local charities and organisations to run classes that are more accessible to those who may struggle socially or financially.
• Holiday camps - During the school holidays we run multiple parkour camps at our current site & local schools. We also work with local charities and councillors to bring school holiday programmes to disengaged communities
• School classes - We work with local schools, delivering after school clubs to their students, improving their strength and coordination
• Specialised grading system - At spiral we have created our very own parkour grading system ensuring that students can track their progress and constantly improve by building up to new moves.
• 121 sessions - Private sessions are also available for those who find a class overwhelming or would like to have the focus of the coach.

• Performances - We regularly work with different communities in our local area and other surrounding areas to perform a choreographed parkour performance to boost awareness of our sport.
• Party and Events - Spiral offers parties to our members and event workshops for local businesses and organisations.
• Opportunities to work in our unique sport - Currently have 4 junior coaches who have transitioned from students into highly trained coaches who can now run their own classes.

• Community videos - The team are constantly making videos and social content to engage with and build our parkour community. This ranges from parkour tutorials/Podcasts on YouTube, to Parkour showcases and event posts.
• Parkour clothing - We proudly design and print our very own clothing in house, with a high number of students wearing our various clothing ranges.
  
  
  - Our mental health awareness day t shirt
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Parkour

Parkour is a sport which utilises efficient movement to overcome obstacles and express oneself through movement, using a mixture of jumping, landing, vaulting and climbing techniques. Traditionally, the focus is on getting from point a to point b in the most efficient way possible however as the sport is developing, the use of somersaults and movements from various other sporting backgrounds is becoming much more prominent. The way in which you train parkour is very much independent to the individual. Modern parkour is very much taking towards the direction of self expression using a combination of skills to create an aesthetic/ challenging series of movements. What's most attractive to most about parkour is that the individual is responsible for dictating their training path and style, and can adapt the movements they practice in accordance with their own desires at the time, meaning progression is ultimately determined by you as an individual.

Why are we fundraising?

Over the last year we have seen an amazing growth in members, and general interest in our company. This has allowed us to develop more staff roles, create more classes and work with so many wonderful people to bring parkour to all communities. However recently we have come against some serious problems that are hindering our companies mission and expansion:

• Rent increase - The venue we operate from has recently increased the rent of our bookings to accommodate the new classes we have opened and general inflation. This new rent agreement is for 36 hours of access per week with the new rent price coming close, to the price of a warehouse unit of similar size.
• Space - We are rapidly running out of space for new members leaving some classes with long waiting lists to join. Usually we would open a new class for these members but our venue cannot offer us more hours due to other bookings.
  We have already ran out of storage space stopping us from creating and purchasing more equipment to accommodate the growing number of members and increase the range of variation in class.
  Along side this we desperately need more workspace as our current office/workshop is a garage that the directors have converted into a workspace that we are starting to outgrow too

• Equipment - Spiral has to build a lot of the equipment themselves so that it is purpose made for the classes. This is very costly due to the amount of material needed to make safe equipment and any repairs. If we had a purpose built gym (that did not need to packed down at the end of each day) the equipment would be sturdier, higher quality and we could have a grater range of different obstacles.

Our project

In order to fix all of these problems, we plan to use the money raised to pay for the first years rent on a warehouse unit, allowing us to start construction on Bedford's very first purpose built parkour gym and movement centre.
This will give us the space and access to move our office, media production room, workshop and gym all into one building, so that we can offer more lessons, content and courses to the community. Being able to open during the morning and afternoon would mean that we could work with many more charities, companies and local councillors. Classes would reopen as soon as we have access to our new space (and once the area is safe and sectioned off), using our current mobile equipment to teach lessons and build our parkour gym in, out of lesson, time. This means that classes and profit will be unhindered by our premises switch and members will be able to see the parks creation whilst having some input to its layout. We already have a small savings pot for the construction price and hope to use any money from our stretch target to help this too.
Inside our new building














we aim to have:

• Purpose built parkour gym complete with rails, walls and vaults 
• Sprung floor
• Foam pit
• Strength/weight area
• Trampolines
• Classroom & office space for training, administration & meetings
• Clothing production workshop
• Media production room
• Cafe and lounge for parents with viewing capabilities

Failing this we still have a back up plan in place with trinity arts and leisure. This is a contract that has already been agreed on allowing us the exclusive right to rent the whole room we are currently using along with more storage space and a few rooms within trinity for £30,000 per year. However this does not start until October 2023 providing construction work on site is finished, if not October 2024. There are still a few problems with this as we will be paying the same price of rent for less space and the problem of only being able to access trinity during their open times halting our productivity. This also means we could not have a trampoline, foam pit or cafe.

COVID-19 & how it has effected us

We decided to make the jump from part time to full time in January 2021 which was put to a halt by COVID-19. We delayed our re-opening until April 2021 where we increased our class output from 4 per week to 18+ per week. Unfortunately we had to close for a second time between May-June before re-opening as a CIC. COVID-19 had a big part to play in our transformation to a CIC as we realised that the current state of affairs was not stable for us to continue operating as we were and the need for additional funding and support, to make up for our loss of customer base, and financial stability became imminent. Since our re-opening in June 2021, we noticed that many people were very uncertain about the safety of the activities in the confined space, and therefore affected us in delivering our services to our intended capacity. Whilst the effects that COVID-19 had on us as an organisation are not as prominent, we still face difficulties in fulfilling our services to it's full potential (in schools particularly).