It was with sadness that I read the e-mail from Sensei Cavalcanti regarding the situation which The American Zen Judo Family finds its self in. I believe that unlike the USA the UK seems to have a large number of small village and church halls and schools available for running clubs in and from that point of view we are able to keep minority martial arts clubs viable for the most part.
But from past experience I know that many clubs have a hard time finding and keeping members when they have to contend with large commercial leisure centres who have the money for large advertising campaigns and the ability to put on a martial art each day of the week, no matter that it might be on the same day as a local club which has been operating for years.
The situation which is present in the US is very likely to be the situation we will have here in another 10 years time. This will mean that all small martial arts clubs will be squeezed out of the running and only the large commercial concerns will survive. I hope I’m wrong but as hall hire costs climb the ability of clubs to be run on a non profit making basis will become more and more difficult to achieve.
John
Having just moved this post over to the new site and re-read it, it occurs to me that not only are the small, not for profit clubs, being driven out by higher costs now, but also by the very large number of martial arts clubs being run entirely for profit, by instructors who make a living out of it. Even in my small area there has to be around a dozen different martial arts clubs running, often on multiple days of the week. Most of these clubs are providing MMA or various styles of kick boxing type arts. As they then often don’t need crash mats for practice, ALL the hall hire time is spent training, for Judo we loose at least 30 minutes putting the mats out and away at the end of the lesson.
John