Once upon a time, a group of young people set out on a mission to build the first parkour park in Poland. Little did they know that they would be starting a movement that turned Gdańsk into the country’s parkour capital. I’ll tell you about the obstacles they met and what followed next.

What Is Parkour, Anyway?

You saw it on TV or in a cinema, perhaps. Ever since its inception in the late ’80s, parkour has been present in visual media such as movies and video games. But besides being an aesthetic trope, parkour is an actual training discipline. If you live in a major city, chances are high that you can stumble upon traceurs and traceuses. (In case you are wondering, these are terms referring to, respectively, male and female practitioners of parkour.)

Parkour makes use of the urban environment as an obstacle course of sorts. The main premise is to get from point A to point B in the most efficient manner. This often means taking various “shortcuts” such as leaping between buildings, running up walls, or vaulting over obstacles. But to traceurs, parkour is more than mere acrobatic sports. The mental aspect is just as important. To quote Dylan Baker (the parkour athlete, not the actor):

Parkour also influences one’s thought processes by enhancing self-confidence and critical thinking skills that allow one to overcome everyday physical and mental obstacles

The Beginnings

Grzegorz Niecko learned about parkour when he was 13. It started with a video downloaded over a dial-up modem. Digital videos at that time were nothing spectacular. The resolution was terribly low, so the picture was comprised of huge moving squares. It took all night to download the two-minute piece. Yet, this particular video made an impression that stuck. It depicted people moving around the urban landscape in an unusual manner.

Soon, Grzegorz learned that this discipline is called parkour. Luckily, he also found that there were athletes performing similar stunts in the neighboring city of Gdynia. They gathered once a week in various spots. There were no trainers, coaches, or leaders. Just a community of like-minded individuals who used the Internet to arrange their meetings. There were also almost no instructional materials. Thus, training consisted of trial and error — mostly the latter.

There was no shortage of places to do parkour. After all, the urban landscape is all that you need to start. But the urban landscape has drawbacks. Most of the time you’re trespassing on someone’s property. The rest of the time, concerned citizens are calling the police on you for disturbing the peace. It is not rare, therefore, that officers know the traceurs personally: they have many chances to meet each other. Fortunately, animosity is rare between the two groups.

Grzegorz wasn’t the only one who found this situation a bit uncomfortable. A fellow parkour aficionado, Tomasz “Borów” Dąbrowski, also wanted some change, and inspiration came from observing their surroundings. Playgrounds for kids have always been the norm in cities. In the late ’90s, outdoor gyms became popular as well. And these observations led to an idea.

What if we built an obstacle course that would also act like an outdoor gym and a playground for kids?

The idea wasn’t completely unique. At that time there was already a parkour park in Copenhagen. (You can learn about its story by watching the movie “My Playground.”) This meant the idea was no longer a wild dream — it had already been done by others so it could be done again.

Plans for the first parkour park in Poland, visualization by Tomasz Dąbrowski

The First Parkour Park in Poland

Motivation was abundant. But problems had to be overcome. The lack of budget was one of them. The lack of permission from the city council was another. So Grzegorz, Tomasz, and their companions (Karol “Leon” Lemańczyk, Karol Erdmański, Adam Binek) wrote a proposal for a 2010 competition sponsored by a Polish bank. They made it to the finals, but they didn’t win.

Strengthened by this failure, they decided to form an association. The name came naturally: The Movement Association (Movement for short). It’s far easier for companies to support associations than informal groups. And so, the quest for funding began anew. They pitched private investors, the city council, and local companies as well.

From left: Adam Binek, Karol Lemańczyk, Tomasz Dąbrowski, Grzegorz Niecko, Karol Erdmański, by Klub Sportowy Movement

By a lucky coincidence, they found support in one of the district councils. The World and Olympic vaulting champion, Leszek Blanik, just happened to be its chairman. Supported by such a public figure, their pitches finally found interest. The district council awarded them a 15.000PLN grant (around $5,000) to build the first parkour park in Poland.

But this was only half the battle. They still needed permissions from various departments. They also needed the grounds. And more than anything, they needed to fill out lots of paperwork.

And so they did. They sorted out all the legalities by December 2013. The only thing remaining was to find a company that would implement their project. Public funding required a public auction. It went smoothly.

Movement digging the grounds for the first parkour park in Poland, by Tomasz Dąbrowski

To ensure that the realization would fit their standards, Movement participated in the actual building process. They literally picked up shovels and started digging up the ground that the city allocated for the project. They were serious; and they knew what they were after. It had taken them almost four years to get to this point, and they weren’t going to allow their dreams to be compromised in any way.

December 21, 2013, marked the official opening of the first outdoor parkour park in Poland. It is not limited to parkour, mind you. Local children use it as a playground, and it is open to people training via street workouts and other types of bodyweight fitness as well. If you ever come to Gdańsk, this park is located opposite the World War II Museum — just as imagined by the creators. It’s humble, but it serves its purpose.

Don’t Stop. It’s Called Movement!

The success of this first parkour park encouraged Movement to go even further. They prepared sixteen new projects to open different parkour parks in major districts of the city. After that, they also launched similar projects in the neighboring city of Gdynia. In order to not waste any time, they contacted other cities in the “voivodeship” (province) as well, among them Lębork and Tczew. It’s hard to stop the ball once it starts rolling. The same can be said about a traceur in motion.

In 2014 Grzegorz appeared on stage at TEDx Gdańsk to share the story of their venture. His colleagues from Movement provided a display of acrobatics, but the main theme of the talk was not about parkour. It was about chasing dreams and realizing them. Grzegorz finished his TEDx talk with a simple yet powerful statement: