Dear friends of PAUL,
Photo by: Marlon Schipper
We are overjoyed to announce that PAUL will be back with a new class schedule beginning in October! Having had time to reflect & re-imagine over the last few months, we decided to make some changes regarding our classes.
As you may know, USC & ClassPass have been difficult partners for many smaller studios in this time of crisis. This fact, and the beautiful Fair Yoga Initiative created to spread awareness on the topic, led us to re-evaluate our participation in this system. We have decided that we as PAUL want to stand for community and fairness wholeheartedly, even if it means taking a risk and losing students.
We believe that systems such as USC & ClassPass promote (often without the members’ awareness) a lower appreciation of the agreement that is woven between student and teacher as an exchange of time, effort and resources. This often results in a dramatic under-payment of teachers and/or the studio. We see that a system that encourages members to try new things every day also encourages less commitment to one class or school, leading to a course landscape where participants change weekly, anonymity is increased and the chance to develop together is diminished.
As teachers, our biggest joy is to grow together in a group process, seeing students and ourselves evolve over time in our shared practice. With PAUL, we aim to create a space where you can feel home and welcomed as an individual. With an ever changing group of students, it is a big challenge to keep this atmosphere of familiarity and trust alive. We also feel it is draining for our regular students to start anew every week with a group mostly new to the class’ practice.
Especially now, after and within a financially draining time for almost everybody, we are not willing to underpay our teachers or the ones organizing and promoting the classes. We also believe that paying a studio directly for the classes one takes seals an additional contract between teacher and student, and serves as a ritual of acknowledging and appreciating the time and effort both invest to make a class happen. We understand that systems like USC & ClassPass offer the opportunity to move to those that have little money. We believe that such systems ultimately don’t succeed in diminishing precarity but instead help to spread it. If you feel like you can’t afford taking classes at PAUL, please feel free to contact us and we can see if we find a solution that respects both you and your teachers.
All these thoughts made us realize that we want to direct our work at PAUL towards a broader focus on community work and support, going beyond the artistic community. We are exploring new ways to share our space, infrastructures and knowledge with the people and initiatives around us, wishing to contribute to a system of mutual help and respect.
We look forward to having you back at PAUL soon and appreciate your continued support and understanding through all the changes we are facing as a community. Join us in the coming months for one of our new movement courses and become part of the PAUL family. We can’t wait to move together soon!