School Talk: UAE
Welcome to "School Talk: UAE," your go-to podcast for all things education in the United Arab Emirates.
Join us as we sit down with teachers, experts, and parents to explore schools across the UAE.
Each episode provides valuable insights and perspectives from those directly involved in shaping the educational experience.
Whether you're a parent, an educator, or simply curious about the state of education in the UAE, "School Talk: UAE" is your window into the dynamic world of learning in this region.
School Talk: UAE
It's Not Just Trampolines, It's a Movement for Change: Doran Davies - Bounce
Prepare to be inspired by Doran Davis, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Bounce, as he takes us on an exhilarating journey from the mobile phone industry to pioneering a trampoline park in Dubai. Doran's passion for encouraging children's physical activity through freestyle sports like parkour and skateboarding is infectious, driving the mission of Bounce to promote active lifestyles in our tech-dominated world. Discover how Doran's shift towards creating meaningful experiences for his family not only revolutionized his professional life but also established strong partnerships with schools, setting kids on a path toward lifelong healthy habits.
Join us as we explore the heartwarming theme of inclusivity, both in education and business, through Bounce's collaboration with GEMS Legacy School and Team Angel Wolf. Learn how children naturally embrace inclusivity and the powerful sense of community fostered among expatriate teachers and parents through sports events, integrating individuals of determination. From its expansion across Abu Dhabi and Al Ain to the introduction of Mini Bounce for younger audiences, Bounce is redefining fitness as a fun and engaging experience for all ages—encouraging resilience and the courage to step out of comfort zones. Doran shares exciting insights into Bounce's future growth, ensuring its dynamic energy reaches even more communities around the globe.
Good morning. Welcome back to another episode of School Talk. This week I'm lucky enough to be joined with Doron Davis, the co-founder and CEO of Bounce, so first of all, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank, you for having me. It's nice to be here in your beautiful home.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, appreciate it. So introductions who are you? What do do you do? And for those that are surprised, they don't know what is bounce, who is bounce?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I think you got my name. My name's doran. I'm a, a welsh fella that's been in dubai now for uh, over 12, 12 years, actually. It's been quite a while. So I came over here, arrived over here in 2012, 2013.
Speaker 2:I was in the mobile phone business for a number of years and a bit of a case of being in the right time, right place and eventually found myself opening up Bounce. The first venue is in Elmcourt. Now what is Bounce? The first venue is in Elmcote. Now what is Bounce? Think of a big warehouse full of trampolines, full of padding. That's fundamentally what it is, but what we wrap around is so much more so we often talk about Bounce in the context of freestyle sports. So freestyle sports are ones that you see that are typically human-powered or self-powered. Parkour is a good example of a freestyle sport, and when you see the trends out there, freestyle sports are becoming mainstream. You saw what happened in the Olympics with skateboardinging, windsurfing, break dancing, absolutely yeah, there we go yeah, that's becoming mainstream and a lot of people consume that content on social media.
Speaker 2:So so we're in that kind of sweet spot environment where we create spaces that have trampolines, parkour equipment, ninja courses that are all about encouraging self-expression and movement and part of the part of the I guess the attractiveness of starting this business was about getting kids active. I think it's really important to get them active from an early stage because it breeds those habits later on in life. So a very long-winded introduction, I I know Apologies for that, but that's a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:And when you first started Bounce, was it just to get kids moving. It was just all about that kind of obviously we're in an environment where they can't always go outside. Is that the niche you looked into? Yeah, it was very much.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know a lot of these things are driven from. You know, an opportunity arises at a certain time. And when the idea to open up Bounce in Dubai actually came up, it was through a friend of mine, a guy called Ross, who's my business partner, australian guy. He's got kids of similar age to my kids and he showed me a video on his phone at barbecue at my house one day and said this is Bounce, I'm going to do it, do you want to do it with me? And it was very much like that.
Speaker 2:I'm a bit of a sucker for a startup, to be honest. I've worked in startup businesses before and I just love the energy around it. I love being able to roll up your sleeves and get involved. I love being dropped in at the deep end and figuring things out, and that really is motivating for me. So you know, bounce was a really good example of that. And then I guess the other consideration around it which is the higher other consideration around it, which is probably the higher purpose consideration around it, was I didn't want to be a mobile phone guy all my life and I was thinking about my kids. What are they going to tell their friends at school?
Speaker 2:about what dad does. I was actually thinking about Kindergarten Cop, where there's a famous scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger is the teacher in the class and the kids come in and say what their fathers do. And I was thinking, do I want to be that person where I'm the mobile phone guy?
Speaker 1:I didn't really.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with mobile phones, by the way, but I thought it'd be far more cooler to be running banks. And the other part as well is I want, and still want, my kids to be active. I grew up on the coast in South Wales, spending summers down in the beach jumping off rocks into the sea. I want my kids to do the same. So when I see my kids getting glued to an iPad or a phone or you know people out to dinner and the kids the iPad. Yeah, there's something that's quite disagreeable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and promote everything you can to avoid that exactly you know, waging war on the screen is something that's quite close to my heart. Really, I think there's something better in life than just consuming content and being addicted to uh screens and games and, yeah, youtube videos yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1:You should say like what your, what your kids think, like what your kids think you do as a job. And my eldest now I'm not contracted by a school anymore. She's like you're an unemployed loser, you don't have a job. So that's nice, yeah, so hopefully she'll see a bit of a development at some point well, my kids think I jump around all day yeah, they certainly used to. I hope they don't exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 14 and 12, so I shouldn't think that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, we'll see. Um, so talk to us about the links you've got with schools. So how does that work in terms you've got the trampoline park and are you partnered with schools? How does that work?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think we've always done a lot with schools and part of it has been just fumbling around and figuring out the right direction. Um, you know, did you know the journey about started back in 2014 and you know, know?
Speaker 1:we were really lucky.
Speaker 2:We opened the doors and customers came flooding in, you know. So we're kind of thinking this is easy, yeah, but then you know, once you get over that kind of honeymoon period and….
Speaker 1:And that was the first sorry, that was the first of its kind.
Speaker 2:It was yeah, yeah, we were first to market, so the concept was completely unique and never been seen before in Dubai and because of that a lot of people wanted to try it and you know, thankfully they liked it. But then you know, a few months passed and then that kind of recency effect kind of tails off, and then it's well, okay, how do we bring customers back through the door? And you know, you go through the obvious questions, you know around investing in marketing, you know investing in the physical offer and ticketing offer and things like that. But then it's well, our quiet days are during the week. Our business is traditionally quiet on weekdays and busy on weekends.
Speaker 2:So then, well, how do we generate demand, how do we generate footfall during the week? And the obvious answer to that is school trips. Not something we really considered when we first opened first opened the business, but it came quite apparent, and it is because we were starting to get phone calls from schools to saying do you do school trips? And it was like, um, yeah, yeah, we don't. But, yes, we do, come along, no problem. But it really evolved back in 2015 when a particular teacher and I'm really bad with names sometimes, but it was a teacher from Gems World Academy and I think you've got background in Gems- World Academy 2015,.
Speaker 2:I've been there at the school teacher, um, and he called us because he was looking for a school trip that would reinforce, uh, some learnings that they were doing at school. They were doing specific lessons around newton's laws okay, kinetic energy, potential energy, that was called forces in motion and he was looking for a school trip that would be fun, that would demonstrate Newton's laws in action. It started off quite a kind of two-way conversation around okay, I get your objectives because he actually Googled. You know how to demonstrate forces.
Speaker 2:And, you know, trampoline came up as one of the search returns. Don't know how, but uh, but um, the conversation started from there and um, really a bit of creativity then and a bit of brainstorming and we almost co-created a little module we call forces of motion, where you know the kids would come down and we would demonstrate how kinetic energy works and it's perfect.
Speaker 2:You know, you, yeah, or you know you start with potential energy. Energy because you stand on one of our performance walls, because in we have various areas that bounce and one is our performance area. We have walls where people drop off the wall, bounce off their back and run up a wall. So you kind of demonstrate the principles of potential energy by standing on the wall. It gets converted in kinetic energy when you jump off the wall and it kind of went from there really and proved to be quite a hit with the kids, um, quite a hit with the teachers, and we thought, okay, there's something in this, yeah, no um, because we did exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1:We were grade two at the time, went on a school trip and it wasn't something you offered, but we said our unit of inquiry is about healthy eating movement, things like that.
Speaker 2:Okay, we might be talking about the human body then Did we?
Speaker 1:do a human body, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we did about healthy eating and about movement and about exercise and about healthy living, so all of that, and that was kind of yeah, so again in partnership, this is that was our need at the time, and then you, your team, like facilitated it, so yeah yeah, yeah, because we, because when we, when we did the forces of motion module, we thought, okay, there's, there's, there's more, there's more scope, yeah, yeah, yeah and uh, you know, we kind of put this under the banner of bounce ed education, um, and then developed another module which was all, uh, focused around the human body. So, um, we have basketball hoops in the venue when you jump on the trampolines and anyone can slam dunk if you're on the trampoline.
Speaker 2:But the example of that we read into that was feeding someone. You, you dunk a ball and you you're feeding someone. Um, you know, the big airbag was a, a demonstration of the respiratory system. You know, with lungs inflating and deflating, playing dodgeball was around the circulatory system, around blood cells flowing around the body.
Speaker 2:So we're just getting kind of creative, yeah, like that, and we really enjoyed doing those sessions. It's really interactive with the kids and I think the teachers quite enjoyed it as well. Yeah, you know whether they got involved, or you know, chill out and have a coffee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let us take, because I think school trips here as well, can be quite difficult in making authentic links, whereas if you can, like you said, that forces emotion one or the human body, it's a real life like way of teaching that to kids.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, really good one yeah, no, I remember when you know, when I was in school, you know, you know, you remember the school trips that you go on for sure it's better than others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you kind of get dragged around a museum sometimes. Yeah, what am I doing? I'm too cool for school, but but you always remember them. So I'm hoping that you know the kids that do come on the trips and join us for that kind of bounce head journey do actually remember it so how has the educational side of it developed since then?
Speaker 2:so that was back in 2015 yeah, oh yeah, I mean quite a lot. I mean now we're I'm really proud of how, how the team are generating relationships within the school community and translating that into areas where we can further work and kind of co-develop. So, um, one of the most recent um kind of initiatives that the team is driving, I'd say in recent, probably over the last 18, 24 months, is our school's propositional themes around inclusivity, which is something that's also quite important to us. You know, bounce itself. We celebrate individuality. I think if anyone comes to Bounce, hopefully they recognise that a lot of the secret sauce that we bring is around the team. We call them the tribe. Okay, you know, we don't hire people, rip all the personality and heart out of them and reprogram them military style.
Speaker 2:We celebrate their individuality. We have people from all walks of life, and so you know, by definition, we're an inclusive business, but we also came to understand that inclusivity is quite an important theme for schools as well, and that forced us to think about how are we going to contribute to that.
Speaker 2:There are schools there where they have a head of inclusivity. As an example, one of the schools that we've worked a lot with is GEMS Legacy, with Miss Asher, the principal there. I've been working with her for probably the last 18 months or so on this, and inclusivity is all about um generating inclusive environments for the kids and to to really hit that home, we do a lot of work with team angel wolf yeah, so nick and rio and the family.
Speaker 2:Um, unfortunately, people of determination are not integrated as well as they could be in the community here, and so we feel very strongly, as does Nick and the family, that kids of determination, people of determination, should not be treated any differently to anyone else. They should be enjoying themselves in the same environments in the same ways. They should not be treated with kid gloves, and that kids naturally, um don't have stereotypes at an early age. Yeah, they don't have barriers at an early age. So so you know, bringing them all together in a fun and inclusive environment yeah um, is is a very powerful thing, and you know.
Speaker 2:And then nick kind of adds to that in terms of talking about his story with uh, with rio, and his triathlon journey as well um, for those that don't know, give a bit of background about team angel wolf as well yeah, so team angel wolf is um, it's a.
Speaker 2:Angel Wolf is a family, it's a family. So mum, dad, two children They've been in Dubai for pretty much all their lives really. Nick is a very keen kind of sportsman, triathlete and it was about 18 years ago now Rio was born had a chromosome deficiency which resulted in some pretty significant disabilities. And you know, to the extent that you know, the family are full-time carers for.
Speaker 1:Rio.
Speaker 2:But what the family do very, very well is all around this principle of impact inclusivity. So Rio is included in everything they do.
Speaker 1:I've seen them on countenance like run the charity runs and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic. I see Nick regularly cycling through Alcudra on countenance, like run the charity runs and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah you know I see nick regularly kind of cycling through al-kudra, yeah, and um, you know he he's never there on his own, he's always there with rio. He's got a customized bike and rio's at the front. And yeah, now you see tm, his daughter, um, regularly doing um these events and races with with rio. Well, I think she's a Guinness World Record holder for doing an Olympic distance triathlon with her brother as well. Really impressive family.
Speaker 2:And we're really bought into the story and really bought into the inclusive nature or the inclusivity aspects. And I think the schools naturally respond to that as well because they recognize inclusivity. Inclusivity is important and then we kind of ladder that into, um, you know, teachers, building a community with teachers, because I think we've all we're all, or most of us are expats in this country and we know that when you arrive here it's not easy to make friends. No right, it's difficult. Very transient people come and go. So, um, you know bounce offers a, an environment where we get teachers together.
Speaker 2:You know you get a big influx at the end of summer and um, you know, we do strongly believe that um, we can play a role in forming relationships with amongst the teaching community as well. So various teachers nights and then with parents as well. You know we have community events with parents also, and you know miss asher at gems legacy is fully braced if so. So you know we've had, um you know, multiple trips, multiple talks with team angel wolf. Um, you know, earlier on this year there was, um a big walk that was organized at dubai festival city, which is a walk for inclusivity, title hope, um. So yeah, we kind of love working with schools at this level.
Speaker 1:It makes us feel good yeah, for sure as well, so it's a very much a non-transactional kind of relationship in that sense and that those inclusive sessions that happens organized through schools or parents, can come after school as well. It's a combination of the two open.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to be honest, you know it tends to be driven through the school. Yeah, um, because that's just how we're organized. You know we have a team that kind of um, you know, manages those relationships and goes out to, goes out to school, so it just it just kind of emerges, emerges that way and um, you know we often have kind of community events.
Speaker 1:You know, you see, there's lots of different groups um, on social media here as well, so I don't know how many times the south african facebook group has come through today so yeah, we, we do do, yeah, pretty active in that space and then the schools that aren't affiliated with you or linked to you yet with kind of school trips, inclusion trips, can just reach out and go from there yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, uh, look, there is a role for fun, right? Absolutely yeah. So you know, having a having a fun school trip is is always there and you know it's a fun place. Yeah, but we do coaching programs as well. We have a coaching program called bounce freestyle academy. So, um, you know, if you want a more kind of structured, uh kind of course, like, yeah, like after school activity like an asa um.
Speaker 1:If you want a more structured approach, then we offer that as well yeah we do a lot of that with schools too I think, yeah, you gotta be really careful there, you don't crowbar learning too much into a school trip. You are there to have fun. At the same time, yeah, you get a bit stale, exactly. Yeah, just let them play dodgeball kids be teachers always good fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, throw a few balls in the teacher's faces.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah um, in terms of feedback from schools and teachers, from parents, regarding an educational side of balance. What's that feedback been like?
Speaker 2:yeah, positive. I mean, uh, we look we, we manage it. Having good relationships is is always very important to us. So, uh, and the feedback that we do get from the schools, especially around the banks ed program, has helped us to evolve the program over time you know. So you know, in its early days it was pretty. You know, roll up your sleeves and kind of get involved, whereas now it's a much slicker operation where we have kind of cue cards.
Speaker 2:We have roll up banners yeah, yeah but we only did that after the teachers um kind of suggested that we should, you know, move in that direction and and improve, you know, to the point which they have. Um, you know some schools they have um handouts after they come on a school trip so then they can revisit some of the learning objectives that they had the net the next day. So, yeah, there's always always that stuff. I mean we do, we're quite keen to have kind of more conversations with more schools around the kind of inclusion side of things. I think there's many other aspects moving forward that we can do with schools, whether it's, um, you know, co-creation of additional modules. You know we've got forces of motion, human body, but you know, the specific kind of PE curriculum is perhaps something that we can do a better job at and more be more aligned with schools.
Speaker 1:Is that something you're looking to improve in terms of supplementing PE lessons? I'd love to.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, because I think the what I really love about Bounce and it's almost the antithesis of a gym. I go to a gym and I enjoy going to the gym, but you're in a gym and you're looking around and everyone's doing as much as they can possibly do to take their mind off the fact they're at the gym, they're listening to music or there's a reason why there's TVs everywhere. Just distractions everywhere. It's distractions, right, and you know that's what I love about Bounce, is that you know it's fun, first and foremost.
Speaker 2:You know, you're jumping around, you're having a good time, you're there with your mates, you're with our team as well, and you're having a great time. The byproduct is you're getting a good workout.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're not going there for a workout. You there, you know, for the giggles, right, but you're getting a good workout just as a byproduct.
Speaker 2:Yeah about it. So I think the more kids we can get get through the door, whether it's from a school environment or just generally, they're coming in here because they're they're having a bit of fun but they're burning a truckload of calories at the same time is only a good thing. And, um, you know, taking more kids out of their comfort zone. Um, because we tend to wrap our kids up in cotton wool more and more these days, the more we can take them out of their comfort zone to try new things, to try out new tricks, the better it is. For, you know, resilience as an example.
Speaker 1:Just curiosity, that's important yeah for sure yeah, and then probably should have asked this one earlier. In terms of growth, you had your Alcuz one initially, and then at what point do you think, okay, let's open the Festival City one, for example, and Minibounce you went to the other day, which Harper absolutely loved?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was always the intention to build a number of venues. It was never the intention just for me and Ross to build Alcos and sit back and relax, that's just not what we're about. That's just not interesting for us. We're just really excited by what we're about. That's just not interesting for us. We're just really excited by what we're doing, and just the energy. It reminds me of a job I had when I was a teenager back in Swansea at an ice cream parlour.
Speaker 2:It was as much of a social experience as it was about earning money, and I look at banks in the same way. Building out more of these things, taking it to different markets, was always very, very important. So, yeah, the kind of rollout really started in 2016 when we built two venues uh, one in abu dhabi and one in alain and then over the years we've gone into new markets, you know, in saudi arabia, in qatar, we're all across the uae now and and Dubai, yes, is a good example of a market where we have Alcoz, the OG, and then we also have Dubai Festival City, which is our Bounce X version which is double the size of Alcoz.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a big one, that one, isn't it? That opened in 2020, which was great timing. We operated for two days and then shut down for four months, something like that. But yeah, now we've got, yeah, mini banks, so it's banks for little people, because I think that area of the market has not been very well served so I kind of describe it as being designed for mums but built for kids, because we all know it's mums that are the decision makers when it comes to where we take the kids?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, because we Harper got invited to a birthday party and we just saw Bounce and she's had bad experiences with trampolines growing up so we were like a bit hesitant to go because she's only two. And then we went to mini Bounce and she loved every second of it. Yeah, okay, great, yeah, really good experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're building a few of those at the moment actually.
Speaker 1:And I guess that must take away the term time aspect of it, because those kids that aren't at school Monday to Friday yeah, it's an interesting one because I naturally think the same thing.
Speaker 2:Kids go to school pretty early in this part of the world. Yeah Right, very early, you know. Think about ella and barney you know they're in school when they're three years old three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was three years.
Speaker 2:You can go from three fs1, yeah, fs1, yeah, yeah, so really appealing to the kind of one, two year olds. Yeah, you know the real really small dots which we do, which we do um, but yeah, it's it. It does work quite nicely because there's um, you know, kids obviously finish a little bit earlier when yeah, when they're younger as well. So there's, there's more time, more time available, but um, yeah, just really like the fact that we were able to take what we've learned and done at bounce and then translate that into mini bounce for the little dots.
Speaker 1:It's nice to see, yeah and then thinking ahead where does bounce want to go?
Speaker 2:next, more mini bounces, oep bounces yeah, I mean there's there's always lots of uh uh room for expansion, and we're only just getting started. Really I mean um. I've got four more venues in the pipeline as of now. Yeah, and you know the team's kind of structured and scaled to deliver, deliver more so.
Speaker 2:So we're definitely in a growth mode you know, you know, 2020, 2021, 2022, I felt like we're treading water a little bit, just managing. Yeah, it's kind of covid era for us, a kind of new environment for us, um, whereas now's kind of you know, full on the gas and let's, let's grow this yeah, this thing and push it out, because I you know wherever we take it.
Speaker 2:You know is, you know charge is a good example. You know the last, uh, one of the last bounces we built was in charger in end of 23. We also built another one in abu dhabi earlier on this year as well. But going into Sharjah has been fantastic for us because Sharjah tends to be a little bit of an underserved market certainly in the entertainment space.
Speaker 2:Dubai and Abu Dhabi are obvious destinations for brands to go, but Sharjah not so much. But I'm delighted with how things have panned out in Sharjah, because the reception of schools there has just been absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I suppose, yeah, they're probably coming to Dubai for those school trips.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, you can imagine, you know, fighting through the traffic to get to.
Speaker 1:Dubai.
Speaker 2:It's just a disaster sometimes. So the fact that we're on their doorstep there means that you know we're just really accessible and it's the same experience. So, yeah, it's great. So more more, more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then in terms of the educational side of it for Bounce, is there an aim to carry on the expansion there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we really want to do more on the inclusivity side with more schools. I do think we're only just getting started on that I think the team have done some fantastic work with the likes of Gems, legacy and so on, but there's so much more we can do and it really takes away from just a transactional school trip.
Speaker 2:How much do you cost blah, blah blah. It moves it into such a more beneficial space for the school and for us as well. So yeah, but we're kind of scratching the surface on that one. And then if there are also you know any schools out there that have you know specific themes that are coming up for next academic year as an example, then yeah, talk to us. We'd love to get involved in that. If it's, you know, our kind of strength area, something you're interested to do, then we'll.
Speaker 1:Out of interest. Do you have teachers working for you, with you, in terms of developing that, or is that something you might look into? Yeah, yeah, no, it's good question we.
Speaker 2:It's amazing the types of people that you have in the business. You know, you know, you know, we know that in this part of the world you get a lot of people attracted to this region because the ability to earn is that much stronger than it is in, perhaps their home countries, and you know there are certain difficulties around that, which then means that you always need to stay close to the skill sets and the experiences that you have with the people in your venue it's amazing.
Speaker 2:Like you know, we've got you know, cisco certified network engineers that joined us as a host in the venue Really what? And paramedics who earn a better salary at banks than they would being a paramedic in the Philippines, as an example. But we have our teachers. So the Bouncehead module was actually developed by a teacher, a British teacher who worked with us back in 2015 and ran one of our venues in Saudi Arabia up until quite recently, actually, she helped develop the Bouncehead modules which still is infancy area because her background was teaching in PE.
Speaker 1:Okay, it was her background as well, so we've had teachers working for us yeah, I think it definitely would help as well going in speaking to another teacher, just knowing, bouncing ideas off them and saying, look, like you said before, this is what we're doing next term, next year. Yeah, how can you build a program that's not a a one-off PE trip, one-off thing thing, just a kind of continuous relationship?
Speaker 2:yeah, and it challenged us as well. Right, yeah, sure we're not doing something or we can do something better. Yeah, absolutely yeah, because there's definitely more we can do in that space. But then sometimes my imagination is just not enough or we we kind of get a bit snow blind with what we do yeah, in the venue. It takes a bit of a shock treatment to say what have you thought about this?
Speaker 1:I know, just thinking out loud from a looking at it from a school perspective, but also a kind of a parent perspective. Sometimes you get those trip letters you're going to balance yeah, Okay, as a parent, is that educational? But if you get a trip letter saying we've got a term program at balance that's focusing on x, y and z and this is how it links, then it's again a little bit more authentic.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I agree because there is definitely that, um, you know you've got that. It's not a stigma, is it? But it's kind of yeah, well, there's definitely a problem to be solved, isn't there? Because you know the kids finish school at what three? Yeah, anytime between 215 to 330 yeah, mom and dad are working right. So what are you doing in the meantime and if we can solve a bit of that problem?
Speaker 1:great fantastic. Um, yeah, I think yeah, definitely more we can do in that. And then last question about schools. Do you do any in-house stuff? So do you go to schools to do anything?
Speaker 2:yeah, we have done quite a bit in that space. Um, I remember personally doing something at gems metropole back in 2016, was it? You know what did? They call it like a wake-up warm-up session, okay, in the morning, yeah, yeah, um, where we, um, we brought down a kind of trampoline, yeah to the uh into. It was actually the car park where they parked the buses.
Speaker 2:We set up there, the kids came in and we did a little fitness session yeah just to get people energized and warmed up and um, I suppose tricky to bring the equipment down. It is a bit tricky, yeah, but we've got, we do have um, we do have some trailers, so we've got like um kind of mobile units where we can drag it with a truck and you know it's like a trailer that you'd see on the back of any truck which doubles up as a performance wall.
Speaker 2:You have trampolines, that kind of flip down on the side. You can take an airbag across as well. We've done that on many occasions, like um, sports days. Yeah, you know, just add a bit of interest, a bit of yeah, yeah, yeah, just get people, you know, just get a bit more energised, get a bit more doing something a little bit different to, perhaps, what they traditionally do.
Speaker 1:So, yes, we have done that Amazing, yeah Quite a number of occasions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think for me, having experienced it from a teacher and from a parent perspective, I know that.
Speaker 2:What do you think?
Speaker 1:I thought both was great, I think initially, when they built the human body module for us. It was good because you weren't just going and then trying Dean Winders, dean Winders, yeah, that's Good man, yeah, yeah, yeah there, there we go, just came, there we go, just came to me. Now Dean is a good friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, been skiing with Dean, good guy, good guy yeah, so yeah, but then, yeah, like you say haven't experienced it from both I know as of now from a parent perspective that it's not just a trampoline park. It does offer a lot of educational links. So if that gets across today, then fantastic. It's good for everything. Great. It's good for everything, great. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:School Talk. Yeah, it's a pleasure. And do you know who you look like? Go on, jamie Redknapp.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:I mean it's not. Have you had that before?
Speaker 1:I have a few times. Okay, it just dawned on me, perfect, you heard it on the podcast as well, so we'll take that. That's going, just that, um dorian, thank you so much for coming on pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks for really appreciate it and, yeah, I think from a school perspective, a parent perspective, go down to bounce the team. They're all great, definitely reach out and, yeah, get involved. So thank you so much again. Thanks a lot. Um, this has been school talk again. If you find this episode useful or you think someone might enjoy it or learn from it, please share it with them and we'll continue to grow. My name is chris jobsoul and bye for now.