Chloe Broomby – donation-based qigong on the Downs, Bristol
Runs a weekly pay-what-you-can qigong class on Clifton & Durdham Downs, sometimes for a single person. The Downs licence would cost £900 a year.
“Sometimes I only have one student, other times I have seven, and I can’t be paying [that] a year for… well, I wouldn’t be making any money.”
“I don’t take up hardly any space. You can barely see a footprint. There is a very large class quite close to me [that] probably has 20-plus students every week – but still, everybody should be able to use an open space.”
“There’s festivals and concerts going on all the time, and I can understand that, because there’s vehicles coming on and off the grass, there’s toilets… there’s so much more involved. But somebody just walking on, putting down the bag… it’s there for an hour and then walking off again. It’s not affecting anybody. In fact, people sometimes walk past and go, ‘oh, that looks nice.’”
“Somebody could just be going for a walk on the Downs and something could happen to them. I don’t think I necessarily need to have first aid to cover people who are coming to my class. Everybody’s responsible for themselves.”
“I could understand showing you credentials and things, but it shouldn’t be a huge amount. It’s not going to have a big admin thing. It would take two minutes to check paperwork, wouldn’t it?”
“If I do it on the Downs and in a different park, I’ve got to pay two separate fees.”
“If I had to pay the fee? Oh, I wouldn’t do it. No, I wouldn’t be able to.”
“Mine’s donation-based anyway, because I’m not paying for a room or anything – pay what you can. You don’t want to stop anybody turning up, so if somebody couldn’t afford it at all, I’d still like them to come. It’s nice that it’s a massive open space and anybody can just come along and join in and use it.”
“That’s come from my teacher who taught me – that’s always been her policy. When it rains, all that she makes, she gives to the homeless.”
“My intention was to start publicising for September, and I don’t know whether to do that or not – because they can come and find me at that time. So I’m just keeping it underground, and the people that know I’m teaching know I’m teaching. If they turn up, they turn up.”
“All the people that have been coming to me are all very angry about it, and very supportive, and just saying, ‘please just keep going, and we’ll come wherever you are.’”
Julia Turner – BYOB (Bring Your Own Baby) mother-and-baby choir, Bristol
A weekly 45-minute singing group for new mothers and babies. The fee was first set at £1,800, then £400 (£200 in the discounted band), with public liability insurance, a risk assessment and a first-aid certificate demanded.
“You’re supposed to have a first aid certificate for singing in a park.”
“It lasts 45 minutes – singing for vulnerable people, at a vulnerable stage of life. It has a massive effect. People said it was like a lifeline; it helped their mental health so much, it brought community. It was the thing they looked forward to most in the week.”
“I haven’t paid the licence fee – I’m stalling it. They are in touch with me, and they have indirectly threatened me, saying they are going to be taking people to court.”
“I fall into the lower category – I could afford to do it, but I object. I think it’s really wrong, and it’s obliterating people who couldn’t afford it and would not be able to.”
“There are loads of dog-walking people paying 50% less than other businesses. They can have the same turnover as my business but pay 50% less.”
“People go past smiling, we clear up litter and dog poo. We are custodians of the park.”
“We pay for licences but we get no rights to the space. If a company rents out for a massive event that takes up all the accessible places – right, where do we go now?”
“This is going against all they are saying – that they want more activities in parks.”
“Loads of people are really affected – people who were about to trial something in a park and decided not to. People were going to offer something and decided not to.”
“Every time I ask a question, they dodge the question.”
Ailie Tam – “tree-to-tree” yoga and forest bathing, Bristol
Runs niche yoga for often just two or three people, walking between parks. Because she uses two parks she would need two licences; the fee indicated was around £700.
“I do niche yoga – often only two or three people. I walk from one park to another, do forest bathing and yoga. I do it because I think it is important to offer.”
“I was teaching two classes – tree-to-tree yoga, which involves going from one park to another – and two other classes, just over the summer. Since the permit came in, where the original information suggested I was going to have to pay £700, I decided to stop. That wouldn’t cover how much I would make.”
“It’s really, really weather-dependent. The year before was really wet – I couldn’t get out until the end of May. It’s not like there’s a structure that can be used. If I was renting a gazebo I’d be more than happy to pay for that, because then you can teach outside the whole time. But I’m literally just teaching in the park, or going between the two.”
“I don’t really feel like I’ve been using it completely for free, because I’ve been donating to tree planting – I’ve donated two trees, which have gone in the park. We have lost all our common land, we’ve lost our places to gather and connect to the land, which is so important. It connects people back to nature, and it’s a sense of a shared space.”
“I don’t feel we are impacting on the land in any way by gathering and practising yoga. If anything, it’s building a sense of community to care about the land. As part of the Friends group, we need people who care about the parks, who come and collect the litter and do the bulb planting – the hours of volunteering I’ve been doing for years.”
“Those who can weather this will be the bigger businesses, and those who are just offering ad hoc wellbeing sessions will feel they can’t do it. There’ll be some that slip underneath and keep doing sessions they don’t advertise – but for somebody like me, who needs to advertise it to make it viable…”
“The scheme came from the Downs – some large exercise classes were damaging the benches. One incident is used to cover the entire city. That’s where the demand for public liability insurance came from.”
“[Squeezing out this kind of community activity] – yeah, 100%. That feels like the greatest loss.”
Helen Wilson – donation-based beach yoga, Swansea
Runs what is billed as Europe’s largest beach yoga class, on donations averaging about £2, up to 80 people on a hot night. The council demanded £24.15 per session after 11 years. She refused, and won an exemption – on condition she cannot charge.
“Doing it on a donation basis means that people on low incomes can come. That means the people most in need in the community can access the event. But as soon as they decided I had to pay, I couldn’t do it.”
“Mine would only run if the weather is good – are they going to refund me if it’s raining?”
“It’s Europe’s largest yoga class. I refused to pay and I won. But the strict boundary is that I’m not allowed to charge a fee.”
“A lot of people don’t give anything now, and my donations have gone down. Beach yoga was a good income for me, and it was donation. Before, people came on the basis that they were giving a donation – even if it was 50p.”
“I’ve had the permit to run the class for 11 years. Then they emailed me saying there would now be a fee. It’s seen as another income opportunity – opportunistic charging.”
“People argue about who owns bits of beach. These are public spaces – for people to use.”
“They’re being hard on people doing anything in parks. People can no longer use parks for things – in the past you’d just use a space. I’ve heard about people being marched off parks.”
Angela Brier-Stephenson – sunrise beach yoga, Westgate-on-Sea (Thanet)
Ran free, donation-based sunrise yoga on the sand from 6am, for around ten people at most, only when the tide and weather allowed. The council demanded roughly £1000 plus a £380 “estate’s fee”. She has not run it for two summers.
“It came out of COVID, when we were allowed to meet up to six people outdoors. My indoor classes had ceased, so I had no trading. I said to people, let’s meet outdoors on the grass, on the beach – six mats with spaces between us. If people wanted to make a contribution they did; if not, it was just turn up. It was just to get people out and enjoy being outdoors by the sea.”
“I would only run my classes at 6am for 45 minutes, and another at 7 o’clock for 45 minutes. On a really good day it might be ten people. I was gone by quarter to eight, so not really in the way of anybody. It’s literally ad hoc – if the weather looked good, if the wind was okay, and if the tide was out.”
“They were wanting to charge me in excess of £1400 to run an ad hoc yoga class on the beach. And you have to pay an administration ‘estate’s fee’ – nobody ever told me what that was for. Whose estate?”
“I don’t believe you can hire the beach out. It’s not your land. The beach isn’t always visible, because the tide comes in over it – so I understood that is the King’s land, not owned by anyone officially.”
“One part of the council is trying to move forward and be proactive, to encourage the local community and local instructors. And on the other hand they’re just trying to block, block, block – or, as I see it, it’s just a money-making scheme.”
“If I’m an ice-cream van and I want to park there the whole summer, 24-7, I’d fully expect to pay a licence – because I’m earning a lot of money. But me – if I did charge, it was £5, and maybe three people, or five, or just one person would turn up. It’s not my regular business; it’s not a money-making scheme to run on the beach.”
“People run clubs, gyms, outdoor kettlebells – they’re there every day, so they’re a business, and that’s fine. But I’m not that. I’m different again. It’s not one size fits all – but that just went unheard.”
“Mental health is a huge one for me. Mental health matters. We know from Victorian times that people who were ill or convalescing were sent to the sea. It was more than just a series of postures – it was a community, and it helped a lot of people start their day in a calmer, more relaxed way.”
“I have my first aid qualification, my credentials as a qualified teacher, my indemnity, my personal liability insurances. I’ve been running my business for 23 years. It’s not just a fly-by-night thing that I do.”
“A lot of my clients said, ‘just do it, just do it, we really miss it.’ But I can’t afford to do that, and I didn’t want to get reported. So I haven’t run it. I don’t do it any more. This is my second season of not running it – I didn’t run it at all last summer, and I’m not running it this summer.”
“The councillors I emailed said they didn’t know anything about this – ‘this is ridiculous.’ It seemed to be a tiny little separate department that decided they were going to start charging licences.”
“This year I got an email – ‘we invite people to apply, and we’ve changed it slightly to make it fairer.’ They’ve created tiers, which I think is hilarious: to teach off Margate beach would be more money than off Westgate beach. But it was still an estate’s fee, still over a thousand pounds. So I just deleted it, ignored it. It’s not viable.”
“Another lady, a swimmer, was denied access across their land to get to the sea. She went through solicitors and everything, spent a lot of money, and they still wouldn’t back down. She’s a swimming teacher – she didn’t need the land, she just needs the sea.”
Qigong instructor – coastal village, Pembrokeshire (Wales)
An outdoor qigong class on a green beside the beach in a small Welsh coastal village, run free every Saturday morning, year-round. Attendees range from people in their thirties to elderly pensioners (one takes part seated); several travel up to half an hour, and many follow the class with a sea swim and a coffee. The organiser has not been charged, but has heard of other Welsh groups that have, and fears the same could reach her.
“Somebody suggested I did it three years ago, and they loved it, and have been coming every Saturday morning since.”
“Qigong is ancient preventative healthcare – looking after ourselves, we take the pressure off the NHS.”
“It’s a community thing, we come together – it’s good for our mental health. It helps you connect to the sea better; it’s good, gentle movement, it loosens up the joints. It’s very good healthcare. We’re here every week because they love it – they feel better, they’re breathing better, more fully, more calmly. It ripples out; the animals love it. It’s a wonderful, very ancient practice.”
“Sometimes we have a group of 15-16 people, but everybody feels better after. You let go of the week.”
“Councils should be encouraging more of these types of things, not putting us off doing them. It’s an open space. It’s healthcare – they have to allow us to do these things without charging us a fortune. I’m not going to pay £1,000 to come down here on a Saturday morning.”
“I’ve had so many comments from people visiting the village over the years, just watching and taking in the energy of it – and it’s what we need. We don’t need more restrictions. We need to be able to get outside, move, breathe, be with people.”