Coming back home after working in France, I find that my Wu TaiChiChuan folk are going to do sunday classes in a public park in Edinburgh (crappy Scottish weather permitting) for the summer. I spent last summer weekends training in public parks in Paris (as everything shuts down in the summer in France), taking in some fairly vigourous TaiChiChuan along with the more Silk Pyjamas aspects, taking in a bit of FMA as well, and seeing some very good Yang TaiChiChuan with expatriate resident Chinese (there seems to be a lot of them in Paris.) This included metal saber, which is great because the weight alone of the metal saber is better than the wooden daos. The space in the public park is usefull for saber also as you are not restricted by space. I enquired as to whether the this was legal in France and was told that it wasn't a problem - until one day the French PC Plods came up and had severe words with everyone and sabers going back inside travelling bags etc. In the UK, rules on this are a lot stricter. I do know a couple of FMA guys who used to train in parks in Edinburgh with sticks but were told only if 2 people were present (some silly Scottish bye-law.) Im told we will only be doing hand-forms and some basic push hands, no weapons, weapon applications, boxing, sanshou or applications. Can anyone shed light on the UK legal aspects of MA training in public parks? Whats it like in other countries - US/Australia/China/Japan/anywhere else - for anything other than basic non-combative MA?
I emailed the local police not long ago to ask for what I could do to make choreographing a sword fight in a local park acceptable (would they need to supervise, would they need a letter from instructors to say I know what I'm doing, etc), and the message I got back basically said "shouldn't be a problem, just let us know when you plan to do it so we know what's going on if people call us freaking out about ninjas in the park" xD Dunno if other officers would be so easy going about it (and I'm planning to go in and get it in writing before I do anything!) but it seems to me as long as you let them know exactly what's going on you'll avoid a lot of grief. Though if you're using metal weapons that's probably not clever. I once got a warning for sparring with shinai in the dead end road next to my house *shrug*
id say the Law will be the least of your problems doing martial art training in a public park in scotland, even if it is in Edinburgh.
I've no idea what the laws are here in Qld, but I can say this: I've had plenty of hard-contact eskrima sparring sessions in popular parks, and the only thing that ever called a halt to proceedings has been over-curious kids and stray footballs.
If Fred McNed and his knuckle-dragging cohorts pops up to enquire what we are about, we will deal with it. Fred McNed is not a species unique to Scotland. Curious kids and stray footballs are absolutely fine. More of concern are peoples' attitudes to boxing, vigourous/energetic MA, weapons etc, while Mrs McGraw is out walking her dog.
I fenced in a park for an hour (my background was Olympic epee, my friend's background was SCA rapier, and we wanted to see what it was like, so we met in a park, tossed on jackets and masks, and went at it for a while). Besides benign curiosity, nobody raised an eyebrow. This was in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Hi Embra, I can only echo what frownland has said. I only ever train arnis in the park - with the exception being days where it is just too rainy to be safe. The biggest problems are stepping in dog poo (grapplers worry way too much about glass, poo is heaps worse, and much more common...) and sunburn. thanks paul
I train in the park in Texas with my friends and haven't had anyone come over and said anything. I had wooden and padded weapons used and even a couple metal but that was soon stopped. I have even sparred with some of the others and I assume that as long as it doesn't look like a brawl they won't bother but the cops in america do anything unless really needed.
In Canada where I am, I sometimes practice katas or hitting hand-held kick/punch pads with my father and friends. It's no problem at all as the park isn't by a busy road but even so, people usually ignore us as they understand it's practice. Sometimes a few kids come up and ask what we're practicing. The only time I had some problems were when I was sparring some of my friends and we were in regular street-clothes. Some people thought we were actually fighting and since the area I live in has a lot of children, several adults came to break it up. The way we got around this was to simply wear a gi, pads (sometimes) and have other martial arts equipment near-by. At most we got some "concerned parents" asking us to move farther away or simply leave, which was pretty silly given it's a pretty big park and we intentionally moved as far away from the kids swingset and base-ball diamond as possible. If we moved any further we'd have to hop the fence into someone's backyard! We just re-assured those parents and it was fine. In fact, one of our neighbours is a retired police officer as well as black belt in judo (sandan), Shotokan karate (nidan) and also trained in whatever police martial arts. He sometimes joins in and is well-known around the area for being a cop so he's good at re-assuring concerned parents. We sometimes have other random young adults, teens or kids wanting to join in but we've never let them as none of us know if they're trained. Plus, if they get hurt unintentionally, we're the ones to blame. Sometimes these kids egg us on wanting to spar/fight or mocking us, such as laughing when one of us gets hit or taken down, however, they eventually leave.
In Canada where I am, I sometimes practice katas or hitting hand-held kick/punch pads with my father and friends. It's no problem at all as the park isn't by a busy road but even so, people usually ignore us as they understand it's practice. Sometimes a few kids come up and ask what we're practicing. Some of the time I had some problems were when I was sparring some of my friends and we were in regular street-clothes. Some people thought we were actually fighting and since the area I live in has a lot of children, several adults came to break it up. The way we got around this was to simply wear a gi, pads (sometimes) and have other martial arts equipment near-by. At most we got some "concerned parents" asking us to move farther away or simply leave, which was pretty silly given it's a pretty big park and we intentionally moved as far away from the kids swingset and base-ball diamond as possible. If we moved any further we'd have to hop the fence into someone's backyard! We just re-assured those parents and it was fine. In fact, one of our neighbours is a retired police officer as well as black belt in judo (sandan), Shotokan karate (nidan) and also trained in whatever police martial arts. He sometimes joins in and is well-known around the area for being a cop so he's good at re-assuring concerned parents. The biggest problem is when we practice self-defense against an armed opponent. We use fake weapons but from afar, plenty of people have said it looks like real weapons, especially the fake gun. Initially, when we disarmed one of our partners from a gun, we'd shout something like "get on the ground!". Unfortunately, people kept believing there actually was an attack and the gun was loaded and several times police were called, found the fake gun and it just resulted in too many problems so we only use the fake gun at the dojo. The knives aren't as real-looking so we continue to use them. We sometimes have other random young adults, teens or kids wanting to join in but we've never let them as none of us know if they're trained. Plus, if they get hurt unintentionally, we're the ones to blame. Sometimes these kids egg us on wanting to spar/fight or mocking us, such as laughing when one of us gets hit or taken down, however, they eventually leave.
