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A year of Uniting the Movement

A year into our 10-year strategy, we take a look back the work done in its first 12 months.

26th January 2022

Today marks one year since we launched our Uniting the Movement strategy to transform lives and communities through sport and physical activity.

To mark the occasion, we’re introducing a new video that highlights why action is still needed to support everyone to reap the benefits of being active and gives an outline of the work we'll undertake with partners, both locally and nationally, over the next three years. 

Organised under three pillars, ‘Building the movement’, ‘Meeting people where they’re at’ and ‘Being the change’, our work will help the sector to recover and reinvent from the pandemic, as well as building relevance, capacity and delivery for now and the future.

We'll target investment, resources and energy where it’s needed most, and transform the way we operate as an organisation to support the ambitions of the strategy, deliver for the sector and help sustain an increase in the numbers of people engaging in physical activity.

 

Tackling inequalities

A primary focus of Uniting the Movement is our plan to tackle stubborn inequalities that currently make opportunities to get involved in sport and activity depend too much on your background, gender, bank balance and postcode.

Ahead of publishing our plan for the next three years we asked Fraser Consulting – experts in diversity, equity and inclusion – to undertake an equalities impact assessment.

We wanted to ensure our plan, and the evidence underpinning it, was absolutely and unashamedly aimed at tackling inequalities.

Now complete, we wanted to share the conclusions of the assessment with the sector so the valuable lessons can be used by other organisations aiming to tackle inequalities.

Clare Fraser, from Fraser Consulting, has written a blog summarising her findings.

Read the blog

“There’s a big emphasis on empowerment, co-creation and learning together about what works. Local delivery pilots have shown the value of investing in local capacity and partnerships.”

Clare Fraser

Fraser Consulting

A year of Uniting the Movement

The past year hasn’t just been planning for the years to come, though. We’ve been busy living our values and working against the our Year 1 Implementation Plan.

Here are some of the key pieces of work we’ve been focused on in the past year.

Active Lives

Whatever we do as an organisation, whoever we invest in or partner with is always based on evidence – much of which comes from our industry-leading Active Lives Survey reports.

The past year has seen both adult and children and young people reports lay bare the impact of the pandemic on activity levels in the country and allowed us to identify key areas to focus on.

Find out more

A Code for Sports Governance

In July 2020, against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter and three years after its launch, we and UK Sport announced a review of the Code.

Eighteen months on, we published an updated Code that included a requirement for any body in receipt of substantial public funding from us or UK Sport, to have a detailed diversity and inclusion action plan.

Find out more

Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Fund

Earlier this month, to mark the year of Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, we launched a fund in Her Royal Highness' honour.

The £5 million pot of National Lottery money will be allocated in awards of between £300 and £10,000, with the intention of supporting new projects that are providing opportunities to people from disadvantaged communities to become more physically active.

Find out more

Commonwealth Games funding

With the Commonwealth Games coming to Birmingham and the West Midlands this summer, we’re investing £6.5m to improve facilities and level up access to community sport across the region - which is part of our wider investment of more than £30m into the Games.

The National Lottery investment is split between a £3m Commonwealth Active Communities Fund, and a £3.5m Places and Spaces Fund, which is now open for applications.

Find out more

Tackling racism and racial inequality in sport report

In 2020 we announced, along with the other home nations’ sports councils, an in-depth review into racism and racial inequality in sport.

Last summer, following a research project that included speaking to more than 300 people about their lived experiences, we published the findings of the review. And six months later came a progress review.

Find out more

The Whyte Review

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure safeguarding standards are maintained across the sport and physical activity sector, we’ve been keeping track of progress on The Whyte Review into gymnastics – which we commissioned with UK Sport.

An interim report was published in March last year, with the full report expected to be published in early spring.

Find out more

Our campaigns

Our award-winning campaigns This Girl Can, Join the Movement and We Are Undefeatable, in partnership with leading health charities, continued to provide support, resources and guidance on how to get active.

Whether it be partnerships with Heart Radio and Loose Women, we’ve continued to search for new ways to connect with our target audiences.

Find out more

Looking ahead

Horizon scanning

In 2021 we undertook a horizon scanning project, to provide foresight on the trends that will impact sport and physical activity to 2031 and beyond, exploring the implications for the sector and helping to identify and understand future strategic issues – to ensure we’re fit to face the future. 

We used the outcomes of this project to influence our 2022-25 Implementation Plan and have now published a summary report to show our findings.

Find out more

We've a busy year ahead and are looking forward to continuing work with our partners, stakeholders and perhaps some new organisations, on the challenges and opportunities to come.

All of which will be done with the same fundamental ambition of helping to make sport and physical activity a normal part of life for everyone in England.
 

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