parkrun Your Way
Showing real stories on screen so more people feel they belong.
parkrun checks in with its community every couple of years to understand what stops people taking part. When events returned after COVID, the mix of who showed up had shifted. Fewer women were coming back.
The reasons were familiar ones - whether it felt safe to exercise outdoors, whether people felt they belonged. The gap made the friction points louder.
With funding from Sport Australia, we made parkrun Your Way; a documentary series filmed around the country. The idea was simple; if you can see it, you can be it. If people could watch films featuring people who they can relate to, they might feel more confident participating at parkrun themselves.
Over twelve months, we went to every state and territory in Australia, capturing the stories of women and girls across over 30 different events to create a library of 38 films.
We travelled to places most production crews never go - Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie, Kununurra, Flinders Island, as well as every major city in between. We talked to women about age, ability, grief, identity, and what it means to just show up, across every background, culture, and walk of life.
Many of the people we filmed had never been in front of a camera, and were sharing something personal.
So, we took our time. We approached every interview gently and without an agenda, and let people say what they actually wanted to say. That care is why the films feel honest rather than staged, and it's how we work on every project like this.
Keep on moving
Lenore has always walked - for exercise, and to explore new towns when she travelled for work. On one of those walks she came across a volunteer measuring out a parkrun course, and asked what they were doing. A few weeks later she went to her first parkrun. The rest is history.
Living our best lives
Veronika was diagnosed with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and epilepsy after she was born, and her parents were told she'd never walk. Her film shows how parkrun has given her social confidence, and how she and her mum Kylee live their best lives.
The series was shared widely across parkrun's channels, and the community responded warmly, adding their own stories in the comments and tagging the events that meant the most to them. Event teams said it gave them a more natural way to talk about who belongs at parkrun.
In the months that followed, more women returned and the balance began to recover. The films reached people who had never seen parkrun as something for them.
parkrun Your Way went on to win a Sport Australia award.
The entire video series is available on the parkrun Resources Hub
Glen Turner, parkrun Australia
Charlie has produced an extensive range of digital material for parkrun Australia and New Zealand over the past six years. His material is always to an exceptional standard and he is a pleasure to work with.
He excels at working to specific briefs and deadlines, and is skilled at collaborating during the development phase of projects and in post-production, to ensure that the final product is of the highest quality and meets the brief.
Charlie has produced more than 50 documentary-style videos for parkrun on a wide range of case studies, from people living with terminal illnesses and family bereavements to lighthearted and jovial subjects. Whatever the topic, Charlie has a knack for putting subjects at ease in front of the camera and doing their stories justice.
He has also produced 10 instructional videos for parkrun volunteers, two TVC style parkrun promotional videos, multiple social media clips for parkrun’s online retail shop and a five-minute ‘annual roundup’ video for parkrun’s Asia Pacific conference.
Charlie is professional, diligent and takes great pride in the quality of this work. He is highly recommended.