Sport Unlimited

Sport Unlimited was an innovative youth sports programme which cascaded funding to local communities via the county sports partnerships network.

It targeted youngsters who may have had some interest in sport, but weren’t particularly engaged with community or club sport.

The first step in the programme was to establish what sports young people actually wanted to do.

Popular alternative sports included trampolining, climbing, free running (also known as parkour), BMX, street dance, skiing and horse riding. These sat alongside more traditional sports such as football, badminton and tennis, often repackaged or adapted to be more relevant to a younger audience.

Local providers organised 10-week, high-quality Sport Unlimited taster sessions designed to inspire youngsters to sign up for longer-term participation. We aimed to get 900,000 young people along to these taster sessions, and wanted at least a third (300,000) to commit to their chosen sport once the 10 weeks were up by March 2011.

The spirit of Sport Unlimited was captured by 14-year-old Chelsea. She was worried about looking silly in front of girls who were in sports teams at her school. After the taster sailing sessions she said:

“It’s really fun… you make a lot of friends and get more confident. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner, you learn along the way. It’s given me confidence not only in sport but socially and in school.”

The Sport Unlimited programme ran from April 2008 until March 2011 and has now finished.  Find out about the overall results of Sport Unlimited in the Executive Summary and key learning from the three year programme in the full report.  You can also download the summary report.