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Outdoors

There's a huge potential to increase the number of people who get active outdoors. But there are significant trends that are constraining and challenging the development of outdoor activities.

At a glance

Traditional outdoors participation is often considered to take place in rural settings, accessed by white, middle class, car-owning people or families doing traditional ‘outdoors’ activities.

To a certain extent, current participation in the outdoors is reflective of this stereotype. However, the landscape is changing and there are several key trends that need to be considered in order to drive growth in outdoors activity.

With a great potential to grow the outdoor activity market, we’ll help you here to appreciate the size of the market and the opportunities to increase the number of people who get active outdoors. In doing so, we’ll consider customer behaviour and motivation as well as the scale and reach of supply-side provision.

Disabled children being active outdoors

Our strategy – Uniting the Movement

While millions of people already take part in outdoor activities, the scope of our work is widening to encompass and promote opportunities that appeal to a wider range of people, many of them in currently under-represented groups.

We’ve already backed some work that would fall into this category. This Girl Can has teamed up with British Cycling to increase female participation via the HSBC UK Breeze programme. This campaign aims to grow the 250,000 people that HSBC UK Breeze has already attracted since its 2011 launch and address the barriers to cycling, with friendly and knowledgeable female ride leaders who help attendees to build their confidence and skills.  

Find out more about Uniting the Movement

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