What is there to learn from the Open Gym? Developing new pedagogical notions of sports by an empirical engagement with a DIY sports infrastructure

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we take an interest in a recently emerged ‘DIY sports infrastructure’ in a Belgian city: the Open Gym. The purpose of our inquiry is to contribute to the literature regarding sports pedagogy by developing theoretical notions, based on empirical engagements, that render how these kinds of sports infrastructures could make up pedagogical places. This inquiry builds on a pedagogical notion of sports as education about, through, and in movement, and deployed theoretical resources of ‘new mobilities’ to direct its focus towards bodily movements. The methodology, informed by the idea of an ‘ethnographic navigation’, involved methods that focused on bodily movements of the researchers and other athletes, and rendered these into descriptive and reflective accounts. These accounts, shown in the findings, present bodily movements as (continuing) attachments, contingencies, and (decentralized) concentrations, resulting from more-or-less solid ties between human bodies and objects, incidental interactions mingling through these ties, and specific ways of coming together by mutual attention. Moreover, the accounts stage the Open Gym as two kinds of places: an interchangeably solid and flowing ‘congealed place’, and a common ground for action that is ‘a platform’. Finally, we introduce the notion of ‘learning to navigate’ to characterize what makes the Open Gym a pedagogical place. Propositions and questions about the empirical and methodological implications of the findings, and what can be learned from the Open Gym, are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sports infrastructures
• new mobilities
• ethnographic accounts
• navigation
• pedagogical places
• attachments
• contingencies
• platforms

Acknowledgements

We want to thank the initiators of the Open Gym, Gil Op de Beeck and Axel Servaes, participants Sander Vanherle and Gunnar Berghman, and the initiator of the Open Dansvloer, Hilke Dehaes, for their time and participation in this study. We also want to thank the City of Leuven, and the staff members at the Sportdienst and Dienst Buurtsport in specific, for sharing their thoughts and experiences in the interviews. Finally, we want to thank the reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).