Our gym is getting knocked down, we need your help

Hi, I’m Damien Walters and I am a stuntman. I have worked in the movie industry for a long time, but that’s not where I started. I started as a gymnast, at the age of seven.

I went on to compete for my country and have since worked on some of the biggest movies in the world. But the thing I got the most out of my start in gymnastics was the community.

Our gym has that community. I have coached there since I was 16, and since then we have had many World and European Championship medallists.

It’s a place always available to the hundreds of kids we teach, and our plan is to reach so many more, and support them into adulthood.

Our gym is a lifeline for many kids, and a second home. That is why I still coach there, and without it I would not be where I am today.

We try and teach children that there is a life and career after their sport, but more importantly that they always have a place to belong.

Our gym has the evidence to prove the first part; a lot of our young performers now work in the film industry as stunt doubles for Spiderman, Captain America, Doctor Strange, James Bond, Antman and many more. Now I want to prove the second part too.

A few years ago, I found out one of our ex-gymnasts and their baby were living in deprivation, struggling financially and staying in unacceptable conditions. The place was in a bad state and a few of us went to help get it set up. When I left that day it hit me very hard. How did things go so right for some of our students and so wrong for others? I started to think of all the students, not only from my gym but from all sports around the country that have sacrificed so much of their childhood to their sport, only to get lost in the system.

I told myself that I could not let this happen to one of my students again. I needed to set up an infrastructure that still worked when children finished their sport - they would have the opportunity and pathway to use their skills to get into a career.

But that is unfortunately when we found out our current gym is getting knocked down.

I immediately started looking for a new place and found a huge building in the centre of Derby, that we can run not only gymnastics from but lots of different sports such as trampolining, breakdancing, martial arts and more. We have this building now, but need to begin the hard work, to keep training our gymnasts.

The building will be a centre of excellence, as well as having rehabilitation space for injuries, fitness space to train and a creators space to learn valuable new skills.

The facility will help pay for any child that gets to represent their country in their chosen sport, as well as providing a pathway for those at 17 toward stunt training or theatre, circus courses, if that is where they want their career to go.

Most importantly it will be a building that they never have to leave. They can go there to talk to their friends or train to keep fit. It will be their second home.

But like anything it will take time and money and that’s where you come in. The building we have is beautiful, but has been abandoned for over 20 years and needs a lot of money and love putting into it. The money we raise will go towards getting heating and power into the building so we can start sessions as soon as possible.

We have various plans in place for the most urgent works and a great relationship with Derby City Council. I welcome any interest, please contact us for further details of how you can help and how we will allocate any donations.

With your help we can turn this building back into a special place; a community and a home for any future gymnast, sports person or movie star.

please click the link to see our journey so far.

https://youtu.be/jJP-6JeQ68w?si=69EU8hqMvoDUqkrL

Thank you.