This is a demonstration of the floor diving technique, from the Street Training Manual.....

What is Street Training?

Street Training is being aware of the effects our thoughts and behaviour have on our surroundings and making use of this knowledge.

It's all and any of the funny, poetic, challenging things people do as we move through the streets.

you may already use the streets in ways that are creative, playful, expresive, brave and athletic. it is hoped that this website will encourage you to do them with more confidence and that you will share your thoughts, pictures, videos and links with other people who are
doing the same.

Sometimes we get together and do Street Training sessions. Street Trainers explore specific urban places, devise and remember techniques and create a circuit through which to demonstrate them and prepare trainees to begin doing their own as a group, alone, during the session and in their day to day lives.

During Street Training sessions we:
walk the line between creative and antisocial behaviour we'll use the streets more joyfully and more...

creatively
We'll demonstrate varied ways to interact with the city, it’s architecture and built environment.
Techniques might include: traffic crossing games, double decker bus catch, guerrilla gardening.
Why? Because we are conditioned in big cities to always walk down the street with our walking down the street face on and police ourselves and others for deviating from this narrow use of public space.

expressively
Sharing your thoughts, feelings or opinions with other users of public space is one way to invest and so co-create the public spaces we all use.
Techniques might include: chalking, accessorising, dancing, singing
Why? Creative expression in public space doesn’t have to be the sole preserve of public artists and buskers

bravely
Connect with self and other users of public space
Techniques might include: small generous acts, reverse pickpocketing, desire lead experiments, walking blind, tannoy hijacking, initiating conversations and games with strangers.
Why? the isolation and alienation, characteristic of big city living are challenged every time you smile at another person on the street.

athletically
Have fun and get fit
Techniques might include: vaulting railings, parkour, urban climbing, racing cyclist away from the lights,
Why? The city can be seen as an assault course and a free gym, travelling through the city can become terrain for developing physical skill and flexibility.

playfully
Lateral and joyful approaches to familiure monotonous terrain
Techniques might include: floor surfing, sliding down handrails
Why play in the streets has been all but designed out of public space. Play is not the sole preserve of children, in adults it increases spontaneity, flexibility and creative thinking; benefiting work and relationships with self and others.

Street Training is the art of constantly transforming ourselves and our streets both collectively and individually. It's commonly understood that our surroundings have a powerful effect on us. Street Training takes the form of spontaneous small-scale happenings in public space and shows that we can have an equally powerful effect on our surroundings with our thoughts and behaviour.

'How do we behave to be joyful' and 'how do we behave to be safe in the streets?' artist Lottie Child asks these two questions of urban people in the UK, Europe and Brazil and compiles them as the Path of Joy and the Path of Safety in Street Training Manuals to pass on this collective wisdom.

This web site is intended to facilitate contact and exchange among people in different places, who are exploring the potential for creative behaviour in their streets.

Why?
Many street training activities only take a few seconds, but as doing and looking for opportunities to do them becomes habit the effects they have are accumulative and confidence building, and perhaps any behaviour practiced for long enough becomes instinct. Its viral, if through Street Training, some one has a little more confidence to make a playful act there will be informal playful acts happening fleetingly all over the city which will make it ok to do a little skip as you walk down the street after time spent with a good friend, smell flowers or slide down hand rails. It’s a distributed assault on the pervasive culture of fear and cynicism that we otherwise perpetuate and normalise as we constitute our urban public spaces.

How?
We produced street training manuals which contains a wide variety of people's knowledge, and just like different ways of using public space, the ideas are sometimes conflicting. The manuals contain techniques passed on to you from people of Camberwell, King's Cross, London and Linz, Austria a manual for Manchester is in development. Street training has two aspects, action and inaction; the Path of Safety and the Path of Joy suggest consciously engaged action in the streets, and Doing Nothing suggests techniques for doing as little as possible, thereby enabling effective action.
Everyone who uses the street considers safety, but joy and doing nothing are usually overlooked. It is vitally important that you study all three aspects. Too much focus on action and your calmness will diminish, too much focus on inaction may result in indifference.

Who?
The Street Trainers on this site are people who have taken part in Street Training sessions with Lottie Child and related subsequent practices. Interested Onlookers are welcome too.

http://www.streettraining.org/view/networks