Becoming a Member
Access Parkour is a not-for-profit and its membership is a vital part of the community focus of the organisation.
By becoming a member, you become part of the community that we, the organisation, are founded to serve.
Most of our members are either regular students or employees at the company. But also includes people that just want to help! So, if you attend classes regularly, we’d love to welcome you as members. We operate on a pay what you can model, so it’s uniquely affordable for everyone.
All Access Membership
All Access Members can attend all of our classes with no further charge. They are also able to bring a friend along and that friend’s first class will always be free. All Access Members are also invited to dedicated online spaces where they can talk directly to the team and are consulted on future projects.
This option is also open to parents whose children attend class.
Our hope is that we’ll eventually be able to offer more membership perks as we ramp up our organisation.
Standard costs for All Access Membership is £100 per month. Which is slightly cheaper than attending two classes a week.
We use a Pay What You Can model and invite everyone to apply at whatever rate is affordable to them. We consider all applications.
Supporting Membership
Supporting Membership is for anyone who wants to support Access Parkour and have a small say in how it runs, regardless if you come to classes or not. Supporting members get invited to the dedicated online spaces and consultations but must still pay to attend classes.
Our hope is that we’ll be able to offer more membership perks in the future, but for now, supporting members are aimed at those who believe in us and want to contribute to our success.
Standard cost for Supporting Membership is £40 per month. We chose this figure because that’s the approximate cost of delivering one hour of parkour to a group. And we thought our members would feel pride in the fact that their contribution was going directly to supporting one extra hour of parkour coaching.
However, we use a Pay What You Can model and invite everyone to apply at whatever rate is affordable to them. We’d much rather build a large base of members paying at a more affordable rate as we want to be a broad community. So please, do consider what you can afford and apply. (And hey, if you’re wealthy and can afford to, consider paying more!)
The Application Process
Our aim is to make the application process as simple as possible. You can apply using the buttons above, which is a short online form. When we get notified of a new application, we will review it to make sure that it appears to be a legitimate application. In most cases, there are no further questions and you’ll receive a notification welcoming you to Access Parkour CIC with information about how to set up the direct debit and join the conversation. In some cases, we may come back to you with further questions, but the process will always be simple and you’ll always be able to talk directly to the people involved.
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That’s ok. We’ve set the prices quite high. We understand that many students wont be able to pay theses rates and will instead apply for a discounted membership. We encourage you to Pay what you Can.
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Your membership is paid by a direct debit mandate set up through GoCardless. The same link that allows you to set up your mandate will also allow you to cancel anytime. You can either do it yourself or email us and we will immediately suspend your membership fee.
Note: Direct debits often take 3-5 days to come out of your account. As a result, there’s a small chance you will be charged if you cancel just before your membership is due. In these cases, just let us know and we’ll arrange the refund manually.
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Just get in contact with us at info@accessparkour.com and we can adjust or pause your membership as needed. If you are suddenly applying to pay a lot less, we may pass it to the Board for approval, but in most cases, minor changes are easily accommodated.
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All decision on Membership are made by the Board of Directors. In the majority of cases, this step is just a formality, but it does protect the organisation from hostile takeover or other bad faith attempts to abuse the membership system.
Creating Members
Access Parkour has become a CIC. A not-for-profit company. These changes promise to change the way Access Parkour can function. Letting us apply for funding and raise money. It also means that it is now governed by a Board of Directors. This is Hedge, Adam and Gordon right now, but in the future it could look totally different. The job of the Board is to provide what’s called the ‘strategic direction’. That means they are involved in big decisions, like new spaces and hiring decisions, but leave day to day operation to an executive team that we appoint.
The Board is usually then held to account by the ‘Members’. Anyone employed by the company will have the opportunity to become a Member, but we’ll also be inviting people to become ‘Community Members’.
A Community Member is anyone who wants to support Access Parkour and have a small say in how it runs, regardless if you come to classes or not.
Community Memberships come in two styles:
All Access Member is the equivalent of our class membership. You’ll be entitled to attend all of Access Parkour’s classes for free. You can use this yourself or for one of your children.
Supporting Member is for former students, supportive parents or just anyone who likes what we do. Supporting members don’t get free classes, but do get invited to all member functions.
Applying to be a Member
There is a short application process to become a member. This is mostly a formality, but it gives the Board a degree of control of the process. You are asked to fill in a short form.
Send completed forms to hedge@accessparkour.com
Applications will be considered by the Board and we will either reply with questions or send you details to begin a direct debit. Your membership will then begin as soon as the first payment leaves your account.
The Costs of being a Member
All Access Membership costs £100 a month or £1000 per year
Supporting Membership costs £40 per month or £400 per year.
Access Parkour relies on a sliding scale model to charge people and all applications allow you to apply for a discounted rate of membership. You can apply to pay any amount. We consider all applications.
The Perks of being a Member
Members main benefit is supporting a not-for-profit and its work, however, they will also be invited to the Annual General Meeting, receive quarterly updates from the Board and there will be a communications channel for all Members to ask questions, get instant feedback or just build community.
Why £40?
£40 is the approximate amount it costs to organise and deliver a one hour parkour class. That means that each Supporting Membership allows us to deliver one more hour of parkour per month. However, this is simply a recommended amount and we expect many people to pay discounted memberships based on what they can afford. Applying for a discount is incredibly easy and all applications are considered.
The Story so far…
In January 2014, I started teaching parkour full time in Edinburgh in a desperate attempt to get away from what was, looking back on it, a fairly horrendous PhD position where I was extremely unhappy. Parkour had been a huge part of my life for the past few years, I’d been delivering classes with Fife Parkour Coaching for around 4 years and I felt like I could really make a difference.
I started with a few friends, Gordon Tsang, Adam Romaine and David Bharrat. And in May 2015 we started a company, Access Parkour Ltd. We didn’t really know what we were doing, so we made it as simple as possible, a Ltd company where I was the majority shareholder. We learned how to become great coaches, while puzzling out Risk Assessments, employment, health and safety, booking systems and payment systems. We bought equipment and worked out of a circus centre for 18 months before taking the plunge in October 2016 and signing a lease on our very own building, Room to Move.
We became industry experts in delivering parkour to children, focused on rehabilitation and introductory movement sessions and explored and developed our own niches.
Bristo Square, 2014. Photographer unknown
We wrote a Teacher Training course which was adopted by the national governing body and became industry standard. We travelled to over a dozen countries to teach parkour.
And we had so many amazing coaches come through out doors. Some only stayed for a few months while travelling. Other stayed for years, grew and developed as people while they were here. Others never left. And I am grateful to every single one of them:
The Coaching Team:
Adam Romaine, Gordon Tsang, David Bharrat, Richard Sue, Natalia Boltukhova, Luke Aquilina, Daniel Lumsden, Kirsten Altenbach, Donald Dalziel, Chris Martin, Panda Ilen, Rory Ferguson, Sonia Marhsall, Yannik Nelson, Calum Archibald, Nina Ballantyne, Sandi Banovic, Seb Koci, Maebh Rice, Klo Fillion, Stefano Sardano, Amelia Penfold, Dylan Jones, Joel Howells and Matt Jones
And of course, the truth is that I was never properly able to run the company all that well myself and have always had help. Mel Aghanya spent 6 years as the company administrator, guiding me through the complexities of owning a business while going out of her way to make sure it all worked. And when she moved on, back into full time work, we wished her well and struggled to comprehend the sheer scale of what she’d done for us.
Nina took over as General Manager in 2021, and then Kirsten joined as the administrator in 2022 and these days it’s fair to say they’re now as much Access as I am. Together, we have hatched a plot to take Access Parkour forward as a Community Interest Company. Doing our best to let the little company we all built together grow up into something that will keep changing lives, day after day.
And so now we’re looking forward to the future. The next steps. Whatever comes, the journey so far has been wonderful.