The Park as Stage: Street Workout Practices and Urban Youth in Samsun

This study is an investigation into the practice of street workout, a recently popular sport also known as calisthenics, in Turkey's urban parks with a focus on young people's engagements with place and constructing urban identities. Emerged as a body-weight-based movement culture that privileges self-training, peer support, and public visibility, street workout transforms urban parks into performative stages. Often performed in designated parks or through playful use of urban infrastructure, the sport originated in lower- income neighborhoods and carries political undertones, such as reclaiming public space at the expense of commercial fitness areas. Using Samsun as a case study, this research examines how participants animate public spaces in creative and artistic ways, and construct belonging through bodily performance. The study draws on observations of workouts, semi-structured interviews and documentation of performances on social media platforms. Preliminary findings indicate that the practice transforms young people's relations with urban space and community. The park emerges as a zone of excitement, recognition, and self-performance, while street workout functions as an affective response to everyday struggles offering new urban trajectories and imagined futures.