Esprit Concrete is a parkour and Art du Deplacement coaching organisation that seeks to give individuals a greater understanding of their emotional, psychological and physical states through movement and self-reflection. Last year, Esprit director Kasturi Torchia contacted Skochypstiks to ask for some help with one of their projects. She has sent us an update of the valuable work that they’ve been doing in central London.


Last year Esprit Concrete started working with Crisis, the UK’s national charity for homeless people, to deliver Art du Deplacement Wellbeing courses in and around Liverpool Street in London.

Championed by Mental Health and Wellbeing Manager Petria Aylen, these courses were designed to encourage members of Crisis to experience the enjoyment of moving in their outdoor environment. These activities help to build a community amongst the members in order to nurture the trust needed for many to begin to work through the social, cultural and personal difficulties that they face in their everyday lives.

For many members, the streets of London can be associated with a huge loss of identity and sense of self, and are often a reminder of trauma of unbelievable kinds. The stigmatisation, rejection and isolation one can feel are unimaginable.

Through team bonding games, strength and conditioning exercises and traditional Art du Deplacement movement styles, the members work on their interpersonal social skills, perceptions of self and others, resilience and relapse prevention through problem-solving and personalised coping strategies for many of the psychological struggles they may be experiencing.

It is so amazing to see the students gain confidence both physically and mentally, and acquire a movement skill set that many of them felt they would find impossible to achieve. Friendships and support systems are quickly formed around training and the collaborative sharing of movement is allowing members to source support from one another even outside of class. This enables them to accept help from others more willingly, and reduces the sense of isolation and loneliness.

 

As many of the members have limited changes of clothes and do not always have access to clothes washing facilities, we reached out to our friends at Skochypstiks to see if they could donate any of last year’s stock. As usual, they quickly said yes and sent us a HUGE bag of items including trousers, shorts, sweatshirts, tank tops and hats, along with a whole lot of love to share with our students!

Esprit Concrete and Crisis members and staff are so very grateful that they have begun to support the community outreach work we are trying to launch and we are so excited to keep this collaboration going for as long as opportunities present themselves!

“copyright esprit concrete and skochypstiks 2018”

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