Photography courtesy of Chris Phillips

Buster and the UPG Team launched the Urban Playground over 3 days finishing at Brighton's Jubilee Square on the Saturday.

TO SEE THE PICS


Britain put on its normal display of dreary weather for the first couple of days, but the UPG Team were rewarded for their considerable efforts on the final day. Blue skies, plenty of public interest and a great turnout of traceurs supporting the venture.

The Urban Playground is the first publicly funded purpose designed mobile environment for the practice and performance of Parkour or free-running.

The UPG reflects the building blocks of modern urban architecture – a series of cubes, stair-sets and rails which can stand alone or subvert existing city locations.

It exists to provoke a physical response – a response of the body in action. When the obvious purpose of architecture is removed our practiced responses seem meaningless.

The Urban Playground – why walk when you can fly?

The UPG Team presented a new performance fusing Parkour with both breaking and contemporary dance in a dynamic flow examining the relationship of the human body to the urban environment
.
Special guest performances included members of:
Team Traceur
Team 101
South Coast Parkour
Seafront Freestyle
Motion in Action

From Buster:
Big thanks from the UPG Team to everyone who made it down to help to make last week such a great series of events!

Sorry to those we didn't get a chance to say hi to - you can imagine how much organising was going on at the side lines.

Big thanks also to DC and TT for representing and the ongoing support over the last year of preparation, likewise to SCPK who have been amazing, to Team 101 and of course the Brighton Massive - SFFS and MIA.

Special thanks to Malik and the Yamakasi for taking an interest in the project, for teaching us, training with us and for standing in the driving rain to film the "wet" version of the choreography.

Patrick is a star! We can't wait to see the film!

Malik's presence, example, humility and wisdom was massively inspiring and will never be forgotten. "Damn!"

Nicked Records for the beats, Rarekind for the Graf - the quality of the look and the sound were raised a thousand times by these incredible contributors to the cause.

Huge thanks to Matthew Andrews for taking the shots and for work above and beyond the call of duty! As the official photographer Matthew donated over half of his fee to the project.

Once again thanks for all the support - a big thank you to WJ and Andrew Smith in particular for his work on our behalf.

Best Wishes
Buster, Miranda and The UPG Team