Many people's dreams of sporting glory involve scoring the winner at Wembley, captaining their country or winning an Olympic gold.

But a growing number of athletes are getting their kicks from launching themselves off ledges and skipping across stairwells.

Free runners are recasting Brighton and Hove as a playground and challenging other urbanites to look at their home afresh.

Racing along the skyline, every railing, roof, barrier and window sill is a stepping stone.

The first purpose-built space for free running in the world is to be built in Brighton with cash from the Arts Commission.

It will also be an arena of adventure for gymnasts, actors, dancers and the general public both able-bodied and disabled.

Its creators envisage an adult playground in which anybody will be able to use the space to play and perform in any way they see fit.

Alister O'Loughlin, Miranda Henderson and Dan Ford, who run the Prodigal Theatre Company at the Nightingale Theatre in Surrey Street, Brighton, have been using free running as a form of training for themselves and their actors for more than a year.

They go out at dawn and spend hours using the empty streets as an extended obstacle course. Since they began they have encountered dozens more free runners and Mr O'Loughlin, 30, estimates there are at least 50 in the city.

He is passionate about the sport and believes everyone could benefit from what it teaches.

He said: "The fundamental thing is that you learn to look at the world around you in a completely new way and you create beauty within that world by the new ways you move around it.

"City architecture tends to tell you the way you should move.

"Our streets are designed to be walked down in a straight line and staircases and walkways can be functional and ugly.

"Once you start free running that all changes.

"Every railing, pole and bench becomes an obstacle.

"You explore and experiment, testing your body and the environment and finding ways of jumping and moving around it gracefully.

"The street becomes beautiful."

The adult playground will feature a series of walls and platforms constructed with the soft tarmac used in children's play areas.

The playground, which will be built within the next 18 months, has been selected as one of five winners set to share £100,000 in funding from the Arts Commission.

Other winners include a pensioners' forum, which will run workshops in street theatre, dance, music technology and film, leading to a Street Elders festival next summer.

Cyclists-cum-dancers will be choreographing a show of bicycle ballet, with a range of characters performing tricks and synchronised moves.

Residents in Compton Street, Brighton, which has a unique butterfly roof formation which means you can walk down the entire street on the rooftops, will be creating artworks which will be visible across the city next autumn.

The last project is the creation of illuminated light structures in central Brighton during Christmas, featuring contributions from local artists, community groups and schools.

The money is part of £1 million being spent on public art by the Brighton and Hove Arts Commission.