When we first began exploring parkour across different capacities and art forms, we were introduced to the possibility of working with children with special needs by the UPG team that visited from the UK. While we didn’t have any experience or extensive knowledge about autism, cerebral palsy, downs syndrome and learning disabilities our discussions with the facilitators at Vidya Sagar school, Satya Special School gave us a much needed perspective on how to bring the parkour to the special needs community.
While children with autism seem to exist in a world defined differently from neurotypicals, they have incredible capacities in various intelligences and as amazing people to add value and redefine societal norms.
Our journey began with workshops started in conjunction with UPG team and Vidya Sagar. The visionary people at Vidya Sagar saw a potential in Parkour that translated into the Parkour Circle team becoming part of the teaching staff and offering parkour as a transactional therapy for students who have been diagnosed with various conditions. With the help of inhouse experts, teachers and care takers, we set about creating environments for the children that challenge them to interact with the outside world. This helped us catch a glimpse into ways of communicating with the children thereby helping us understand their real needs and personalities. The children also were interested in trying the movements and exploring the environments as there were paths to self regulation for them which might have remained locked for them.
There will be a series of articles on our learnings and progress in the coming days.