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Boxing is my religion. Like all spiritual journeys it began with a moment of divine inspiration and my baptism was conducted whilst watching Muhammed Ali defeat George Foreman in “The Rumble In The Jungle”.

I grew up in boxing gyms with the sport giving me purpose, discipline and titles – including representing my country on numerous occasions.

These days it offers me the chance to inspire the next generation of boxers and to help anyone who walks through the gym door, to believe in themselves and choose a positive path in life. 

When people ask me why boxing matters so much to me, my answer is simple: it changes and saves lives.

A safe space for all

Of course, it also improves health and builds confidence, but boxing keeps people – especially young people – away from anti-social behaviour and crime, something that I can personally verify as a former Youth Justice Manager. 

With the number of proven offences committed by children seeing an increase of 4%, change has never been so important and there are many ways boxing helps fight crime.

Firstly, boxing gives young people structure and boundaries.

Many of the children and young people who walk through the doors of a boxing gym – like mine in Oldham, Greater Manchester – come from difficult backgrounds and have challenging lives. 

Having little or no access to opportunities and therefore a lack of agency in the world, may result in challenging behaviours. But not dealing with these pressures means they risk spilling out onto the streets and that’s where crime starts. 

Not because young people are 'bad', but because they have nowhere positive to pour their energy into. But boxing gyms can change that, as these spaces are built on discipline, respect, routine and team spirit.

You don’t just turn up to your gym whenever you feel like it. Instead, you’re expected to train on time, plus you have to listen to your coach, and you learn that effort leads to results and that shortcuts rarely work.

These lessons transfer directly into everyday life and children who understand discipline in a boxing gym are far less likely to make reckless decisions outside it.

Boxing also teaches emotional control, becasue contrary to what some may think, this sport helps a young person understand how to control their emotions, particularly aggression, and how to think and act under pressure.

I’ve seen it first hand – children who once lashed out can calm themselves because boxing gave them an outlet for their emotions and that allows them to thrive.

The many lessons of boxing

Boxing is a good metaphor for life and can help to develop those personal and social skills that people need, contributing to tackling deep seated worklessness and low aspirations.

The sport also fosters the development of positive character, self-esteem, self-discipline, courage, perseverance and resilience.

Instead of throwing punches on the street, they hit the pads, the bags and their coach or opponent inside the ring, but always with respect to the sport’s rules, under supervision and with a reason.

Boxing also teaches respect — for yourself and for others. You shake hands, you follow rules and you learn that real strength comes from self-control, not intimidation. These values reduce crime at its roots.

Another factor that's key is the sense of belonging among those practising the sport. A boxing gym offers identity and loyalty because, at a gym, you’re part of a team.

You train together, look out for each other and you wear the gym name with pride. That sense of identity can pull someone away from a path that leads to anti-social behaviour and crime.

I’ve seen boxing change lives in Oldham and Greater Manchester, where young people that were heading toward trouble now have focus and a reason to stay on the straight and narrow, and I’ve also seen young people who had no confidence, find self-belief.

Not all these children will become a champion boxer and that's okay.

Building better lives through sport

The real victories happen when a young person chooses to stay in school, can find a job or simply chooses not to commit a crime because they don’t want to let their gym or coach down.

At our newly refurbished Greater Manchester Boxing and Development Hub, we’ve been lucky enough to benefit from Sport England funding. 

To my mind, our investors aren’t just putting money into a boxing club and community gym. They’re investing in crime prevention and harm minimisation.

It costs less to fund a gym than it does to deal with the consequences of crime and anti-social behaviour – policing, court cases, prison and reform – as recent estimates place the total economic and social cost of serious youth violence at £11 billion between 2009 and 2020.

For me, boxing is more than titles and trophies, it’s about giving people a chance.

Every time a young person chooses to walk into a gym and away from 'the road', I believe that’s crime prevention in action and that’s why boxing will always matter. 

As one of the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester, Oldham forms part of Sport England’s Place Partnership with Greater Manchester Moving and other local bodies to implement Sport England's Uniting the Movement strategy for getting people active.

I’m proud of what boxing can do to change lives.

In the words of the iconic social activist, pacifist and politician, Nelson Mandela: “Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair.”

Every day, I get to see the truth in these great words in action.
 

He wasn’t lazy. He was bright, funny and desperate to be out in the world. But his local park felt unsafe, the youth club had closed and the nearest sport sessions cost more than his family could spare.

By the time he came to my paediatric clinic, what looked like a 'health problem' – low mood, poor sleep, weight gain – was really a place problem.

Why local spaces are key

We often talk about children’s health as if it starts in the hospital or the GP surgery, but as I explored in my recent BBC Radio 4 series, Three Ages of Child, the real foundations of health are laid much earlier and elsewhere: in homes, schools, streets and parks – places where children feel they belong in their own areas.

Sport England’s latest place work and research puts into numbers what many of us see every day – like the fact that over half a million children, one in ten 12-17-year-olds, say they don’t feel they belong in their community.

This means that almost one in five don’t feel proud of where they live, often because there’s nowhere for young people to go to, and because of the worries about crime and antisocial behaviour.

Take a step back and look at how this paints a stark picture of children growing up in places that feel unsafe, unwelcoming and not really 'for them', so it’s no surprise that in those conditions activity levels are low and health problems multiply.

The same research also points to part of the answer.
 

When asked what gives them a sense of community – beyond friends and family – the top answer from young people was sports clubs and activity groups.

Anyone who has ever watched a child beam with pride after football training or a dance class knows why: a club is not just about exercise; it’s about belonging.

It offers a safe place to go with people who know your name and that offers the chance to be part of a team.

Dangers of the postcode lottery

But access to those opportunities is deeply unequal.

In England’s most deprived places, over a third of people are inactive, compared to around a fifth in the least deprived areas – a postcode lottery for physical activity that deepens health inequalities.

As a paediatrician, I see every day that a child’s postcode can be a stronger predictor of their health than their genetic code.

When local streets feel unsafe, there’s nowhere affordable to go and young people don’t feel they belong, it shows up in their bodies and in their minds.

If we care about the future of public health, we have to turn our thinking on its head, because health isn’t built in hospitals. It’s built in communities.

Exercise and sport are a kind of miracle cure – for health, wealth and happiness – but only if everyone can actually take part.

According to research by Sport England, every pound spent on community sport and activity brings multiple pounds back in benefits to health, wellbeing and the wider economy.

That’s why I welcome efforts to work in a genuinely place-based way – including Sport England’s commitment to invest in the areas facing the greatest challenges.

But beyond the work of any single organisation, the principle stays: you can’t fix place-based problems with purely top-down solutions.

Making children proud

For me, this is what it looks like to move from treating symptoms to changing systems.

You can’t lecture a child into feeling proud of their area or prescribe their way out of a broken play park.

But you can bring together the people who know that place best – including children and young people themselves – and invest in the spaces, clubs and connections that allow them to move, play and belong.

That means co-production, not just consultation: listening to what families say they need, backing trusted local organisations, designing activities that reflect different cultures, bodies and lives and being in it for the long haul.

Our children are telling us they want to feel proud of where they live and that they want to be part of something bigger.

Working locally, listening deeply and backing places over the long term is how we start to make that real – street by street, pitch by pitch, park by park.
 

In February I wrote a blog sharing our first Learning Synthesis Report, which gave a snapshot of how Sport England's System Partner investment is helping organisations across the country tackle inequalities and transform how people access sport and physical activity.

That initial report, produced by Ipsos, NPC and Sheffield Hallam University, highlighted different aspects within the sector and Sport England:

• There is an ongoing shift from transactional relationships to more open, trusting partnerships with a more diverse range of stakeholders.
• Identifying and engaging local champions can accelerate system change as these often hold the keys to unlocking new opportunities and relationships.
• There are ongoing challenges where qualitative data is not valued as it is difficult to track and evaluate over time.
• It is challenging to embed evaluation and learning into our work, and barriers like language, staff turnover, strategic planning and the complexity of demonstrating impact are very real.

Why this matters

As we reach the half-way point of our long-term strategy, Uniting the Movement, it’s vital that we reflect honestly on what’s working, where progress is happening and what barriers still stand in our way.

That’s why we’re sharing this second round of learning, which is based on extensive interviews, workshops and feedback from more than 130 system partners.

How this new report builds on the first

The original synthesis captured the foundations: diverse partners, new ways of working and the initial cultural shift towards greater collaboration and shared purpose.

This new report, which you can download below, shows how those ideas are taking root and where more focus is needed.

It also provides a clearer picture of how different organisations are playing unique roles – as connectors, deliverers, influencers or governance improvers – all contributing to system change.

What are we learning?

There are different lessons that have come up from our research:

• A diverse portfolio of partners playing different roles: No single organisation can change the system alone. System Partners are taking on roles such as improving governance and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), influencing policy and local decisions, delivering programmes to underrepresented communities and connecting local networks – all working together to drive system-wide change.
• Capacity remains a key challenge: many System Partners, especially smaller organisations, are telling us that their staff and volunteers' capacity is stretched. This can limit their ability to collaborate, deliver on compliance requirements and influence wider system change. Building stronger partnerships and investing in people is helping tackle this but it will need ongoing focus.
• Delivery funding pressures are real: even with Sport England’s investment, partners face funding constraints that limit their ability to deliver activities in communities. Rising costs, limited local authority budgets and competing priorities mean that generating strong evidence and insights to influence other funders is becoming increasingly important.
• Culture change takes time: shifting mindsets and ways of working to fully realise the vision of Uniting the Movement isn’t quick. System Partners are seeing the benefits of having time and space to innovate and build the right skills but changes in politics and performance expectations can slow their progress. That’s why ongoing support for organisations to recruit, develop and embed new ways of working is vital.
• Consistency and coordination matter: partners report that inconsistent ways of working across Sport England teams can lead to duplication, extra workload and missed opportunities for collaboration. Clearer, more joined-up processes will help everyone work better together and make the most of Sport England investments.

Looking ahead and building on our learnings

The report contains recommendations for Sport England and questions for System Partners (overall and with different roles – influencing, delivery, connector).

Sport England should commit to improving consistency, supporting partners in their distinct roles and keeping the focus on long-term, systemic change.

Over three years into our five-year, more than £600million investment in System Partners, we’re seeing the difference this collective effort can make across the system.

And here’s what we’ll do next:

• Keep listening and adapting by using insight from the evaluation to refine how we support, fund and connect partners.
• Back system enablers by investing in people and organisations that help others collaborate, learn and grow.
• Improve how we convene by making our events, communications and shared spaces more purposeful and coordinated.
• Act on feedback by being open about where we can do better and using your insights to improve our role.
• Stay focused on system-wide impact by keeping the long-term view in mind as we plan for the next funding cycle and beyond.

Some considerations for partners are:

• We ask all partners to continue sharing evidence of impact – especially where it aligns with Uniting the Movement through their evaluation and reporting. This will be vital as our ability to demonstrate the value of working in this way and having compelling evidence and insight to support our shared mission and vision continues to be key.
• Encourage partner-led collaboration​ – we ask all partners to create new, and continue existing, collaboration and to deepen the way they work with others, creating shared spaces and goals on the things that matter most and sharing their learnings around with other partners.​

Why this matters to us all

Together, these insights reinforce the belief that transforming access to sport and physical activity isn’t just about delivery – it’s about culture, partnerships and everyone playing their part in the system.

We hope this report prompts reflection, sparks ideas and encourages all of us to keep challenging ourselves to do better for the communities we serve.

If you’d like to read more or share your thoughts, please get in touch.

We’d love to hear from you.
 

Given the strong link between physical activity and improved whole-school outcomes – from embedding essential life skills to broadening horizons and helping young people build a positive, lifelong relationship with movement – we support plans for this more concerted effort around the school sport agenda.

The announcement builds on the work the government is already doing with partners including the Youth Sport Trust and ourselves to boost participation, having already invested £100m to upgrade sports facilities back in March this year.

We strongly believe that this new approach to school sport should build on the existing strengths, assets, and resources of the current school sport system.

We look forward to working with government to bring this new approach to life, sharing the insights from the recent School Games Organisers Network Review (whose Objective A report will be published towards the end of the month), shaped by the contributions and time of many colleagues across the school sport landscape.

At Sport England, collaboration and learning are at the heart of what we do.

That’s why we’re excited to share the highlights from the recent interim evaluation of our investment into system partners – the Learning Synthesis report – a document that offers valuable insights and lessons for organisations tackling inequalities through system change.

In short, our system partner investment is a new approach that’s aligned with our Uniting the Movement strategy by committing over £500 million since 2022 to more than 120 partners. 

This long-term funding provides up to five years of financial security and stability for organisations to focus on addressing the systemic changes needed to tackle the inequalities stopping individuals and communities from being physically active.

Learning together – why this report matters

It’s important to highlight that this investment by Sport England is about more than funding. It’s about building a movement for change and the Learning Synthesis report is key in this mission.

The report was conducted by Ipsos, New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and Sheffield Hallam University, and it sheds light on what’s working and where challenges remain within the sector.

But it goes beyond that by posing questions – and presenting answers – about how we can work together to tackle inequalities so everyone can enjoy the benefits of being active.

What we’ve learned so far

The result? Insights that are key for our work at Sport England and for critical points of reflection to anyone striving to make a difference through systemic change at local or national level.

Some of the main findings of the report are:

Overcoming challenges to collaboration is key

System partners build partnerships with diverse stakeholders – from local councils to schools and community groups – that create a more cohesive and integrated approach to system change.

We know that Uniting the Movement has provided a framework for building trust and encouraging alignment and shared goals, but we also know that collaborative working takes time, and that this is often hindered by financial constraints, recruitment challenges and cultural barriers.

These obstacles are further exacerbated by political and leadership changes, which can disrupt momentum and require the continual rebuilding and realignment of relationships.

Change champions make a difference 

System partners have found that identifying and engaging local champions can accelerate system change as these often hold the keys to unlocking new opportunities and relationships.

It is important for us and our system partners to think strategically about how we can influence the system, through engaging with these individuals and groups moving forwards, and how we can best identify them within our communities, places and/or organisations.

Quantitative and qualitative data together tell the full story

While numbers are important, stories and case studies provide rich context for understanding our impact and uncovering learnings about why things work, for whom and in what context.

We need to tackle the ongoing challenges within the system, where qualitative data is not valued as it is difficult to track and evaluate over time.

Learning from challenges

System partners recognise that system change isn’t easy. Barriers like language, staff turnover, strategic planning and the complexity of demonstrating impact are very real. But recognising these hurdles allows us to address them head-on with a mindset of learning and growth.

Looking ahead – building on these learnings

As an organisation, Sport England is on a journey to reshape its relationship with its partners and develop a more relational approach to working together to tackle inequalities in physical activity.

Our evaluation to understand the impact of this ‘new way of working’ is therefore very complex and it's represented in an evolving theory of change.

This hypothesis sets out how and why we think change will happen over the short, medium and long-term, and guides our evaluation accordingly.

The interim evaluation findings we’re sharing today provide a foundation for reflection and learning on our progress so far.

The conclusions and the improvements achieved by our partners, plus the challenges these partners and also us at Sport England still need to face, underscore the importance of adaptability, transparency and a long-term perspective in driving system change.

As we move forward, we think it will be essential to:

• continue sharing what works and what doesn’t work when addressing the challenges that arise through our collaboration between our partners and colleagues
• use our successes and our innate value in our work with system partners to continue to build new partnerships and engage with diverse stakeholders, whilst nurturing those we’ve already established
• focus on sustainable approaches to evaluation, learning and insight that balance the immediate need to demonstrate impact, whilst recognising that true systemic change is a long-term impact.

Join the conversation

We're already working closely with our system partners to share and act on these findings through our capability and capacity-building sessions, and our learning and knowledge exchange work.

We also think the findings have wider value to anyone who’s part of a complex system and exploring how to reduce inequalities. Is this you?

If that’s the case, we’d love to hear your thoughts on these findings, what resonates most with your work or what lessons we can learn together.

And if you have any questions, reflections or feedback on this report or any other element on this blog, please get in touch.

November is National Diabetes Month, which brings us an opportunity to consider those living with this long-term health condition.

Without intervention and management, diabetes can limit a person's life satisfaction and can affect all sorts of opportunities including the enjoyment of work and leisure.

According to Diabetes UK, nearly 10% of the Blackburn with Darwen population has this long-term condition and more people have been diagnosed with it in the borough than anywhere else in the North West.

So in June 2024 we began working with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council and other partners to bring We Are Undefeatable to communities across our region.

We Are Undefeatable is a national behaviour change campaign which encourages people with long-term health conditions to stay active.

Exactly what we needed!

But we wanted it to really resonate and to have maximum impact and for that we needed to make the campaign relevant to our residents.

Combining national efforts with local faces

Developed by 15 leading health and social care charities and backed by The National Lottery funding from Sport England, We Are Undefeatable supports people with a range of health conditions, including (but not limited to) arthritis, Alzheimer’s, asthma, cancer, dementia, heart disease and diabetes.

Through We Are Undefeatable, we wanted to support our residents living with these long-term health conditions to lead a full life and to show them that they can actually improve their physical and mental wellbeing by being active.

So, together with partners across the borough, we sought to localise the campaign by featuring Blackburn with Darwen residents living with these conditions and signposting others to local services. 

We created bus shelter adverts, images for digital screens in the town centres and a social campaign across multiple accounts and platforms with pictures of our residents living with long-term health conditions being active, and – more importantly – feeling the benefits derived from it.

From boxing and wild swimming to cycling and walking, these inspiring individuals showcased the diverse ways to be active, regardless of their condition.

One of these residents was Ralph. 

Ralph has had two heart attacks, a heart bypass and lives with Type 2 Diabetes, which led to him becoming visually impaired.

In films, photos, in print and online, we showed that Ralph loves to swim and how he walks whenever he can to keep as active as possible.    

This approach is working! 

We’ve seen the power of a localised health initiative, in partnership with a national campaign, to help tackle and reduce health inequalities in our borough.

Working together, we took a whole-systems approach to tackling physical inactivity.

We engaged all stakeholders, including council and health leaders, community, voluntary organisations, the wider public sector, private business and local communities themselves, to make a significant difference to the health and wellbeing of our residents.

Using data-driven insights, including population health data at ward-level, and collaborating with a diverse array of partners, the campaign has gone above and beyond initial expectations and made significant impacts in targeted communities.

The collective strength that resides within our communities is inspiring and empowering.

Through localising We Are Undefeatable and through people like Ralph, we’ve shown the transformative power of collaboration and how together we can create a culture of health and wellbeing in Blackburn with Darwen and beyond.
 

They say time flies and while this is a cliché, it is one that’s undeniably true. 

It’s certainly the case when it comes to our Place Partnerships, because as we celebrate a year since we kickstarted our Place Expansion, a lot has happened!

Back in November 2023, our Place Expansion programme committed to investing £250 million of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into local communities across England in the following five years, to ensure those in greatest need were able to get active.

We've had a busy and positive year

In the past 12 months, and through this first phase of this Place Expansion, we’ve invested in 53 new places across England, partnering with 27 Active Partnerships and the dedicated organisations they work alongside.

From Swindon to Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool to Brent and Walsall to West Norfolk, we’ve been partnering with key stakeholders in each of these places to establish what the local ambition and approach will be.

Our support will ensure all places across England will gain access to the tools, resources, learnings and capabilities to help them work more collaboratively and achieve the systemic change that is needed at a local level to address the barriers to getting people active. 

By galvanising the system in this way, we know we can bring about lasting and sustainable change to every part of the country.

Working together for local change

Since launching our place-based expansion last November, we’ve invested nearly £20m to help each of our place partners develop their individual approach.

This way of working – ground up and rooted in the needs of local communities – is contributing towards achieving a positive impact that we have not seen previously. 

We’ve seen that baking in physical activity into local, long-term strategic and policy commitments is a key solution to driving change within wider outcomes such as health, environmental sustainability and community cohesion.

Take Exeter as an example.

They have embedded our Active Design principles into their Liveable Exeter strategy –  a 20-year housing plan – by which they will build 12,000 homes where giving people chances of being physically active are at the front and centre of those developments.

We’re also seeing greater connection and collaboration amongst partners within a place than we’ve ever seen before.

At the end of September, the Greater Manchester Memorandum of Understanding brought together the combined authority, integrated care partnership, the transport, voluntary and community sectors, leisure providers, the GM Moving Active Partnership and Sport England. 

Through this collaboration, we will see resources aligned to support the integration of physical activity and sport at the highest decision-making levels in the city and region. 

And within these communities, we are seeing that this work is contributing towards positive signs of inequalities reducing and the inactivity gap closing. 

The contribution of the work and the focus of partners in Greater Manchester has seen year-on-year reductions of inactivity levels in children and young people and, for the first time, this is lower than the national average.

Meanwhile, in Pennine Lancashire, direct engagement and collaboration with the Muslim community has seen over 5,000 young people increase their daily activity levels through the Active Madrassahs programme.

More positive change to come

Impact like this is being felt up and down the country and this work really does speak for itself with a robust message: together we are stronger. 

Our Place Partnerships will see us work in every corner of the country, partnering with organisations in areas that face the biggest barriers to a more active life. 

Together we will create lasting change within the communities that need it most to ensure that more people can live active and healthier lives for longer.

So, looking forward to reaching new places in the next year and to keep celebrating across the country.
 

Our Navigating Local Systems work across Luton started from the premise that physical activity is beneficial for everyone – no matter anyone's age, ability or additional needs. 

And so, physical activity should be everyone’s business, from awareness of the benefits to access to sessions to producing information for different groups. 

But was it? 

Active Luton was delighted to be involved in this project, alongside our hosted Active Partnership, Be Active.

'So many ‘actives’!' You may think, but we were obviously the right people to get physical activity on the agenda and all of these ‘actives’ made us different.

Team work 

Most of the work being done around local systems was being led by Active Partnerships.

Active Luton is a wellbeing trust working across the community to improve health, wellbeing and life chances. 

Our excellent relationship with our Active Partnership meant that we could lead the work on the ground, enlist their support with data and insight, and also in deciphering the technical jargon. 

We felt it was crucial we present the project to local partners in plain English for maximum engagement, plus we could always enlist the Active Partnership to translate back for reporting purposes.
 

Our approach was a practical one, with the aim of achieving tangible outcomes. 

However, we were mindful that this was ambitious and we sought to chunk up the system in a phased approach. 

There was no point jumping right in and biting off more than we could chew. 

Our work began with children’s social care, is now moving on to adult social care and will go on to include services for people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

For phase one, looking at children, the starting point was deciding where we should have better links.

Why was no-one coming to us as the local provider and expert on physical activity? It was clear that it was up to us to establish connections with the right influencers. 

We were fortunate that there was, and still is, an appetite for this work with the wellbeing of Luton’s children - one of the central themes of the council’s cornerstone 2040 strategy.

Like an octopus spreading its tentacles, we were able to capitalise on the appetite for improvement in the local children’s offer. 

Realising the differences among groups

Bit by bit, working through an enabler/connector strategy, we joined dots by putting people, groups and organisations in touch with each other. 

By facilitating and creating this environment it enabled the same message to be spread through the growing network. 

As a result, we are now positioned at the centre of the children’s social care system and have been able to implement change in a number of different ways. 

We now have regular contact with portfolio holders for children’s services and have developed programmes to support children under the care of the virtual school and are the provider for our extensive Holiday Activity and Food programme, which continues to grow its reach and impact.

Our work has even extended across the integrated care system with our Young Person’s Social Prescription programme being adopted across its remit due to the proven benefits in addressing equalities. 

It’s particularly interesting to note that we didn’t ask anyone for additional funding as part of this phase one work. 

However, additional funding did come to us and it continues to come, as a by-product of the work to educate and spread the vision.

The appetite to make it happen grew, but of course it wasn’t all plain sailing.

We were reaching a strong position when Covid-19 struck and stalled our momentum, so we had to start again, if not from the baseline, certainly not from where we left off. 

We also came to recognise that working with adult social care would pose more challenges than working with children's.

It’s a highly complex system which we underestimated. 

We anticipated the same speed of change but the work is proving much more challenging, however we’re confident that it will be equally rewarding.

On a personal level, given the timing of this work in the immediate period before I leave Active Luton, it will inevitably form part of my legacy. 

Reflecting on this, it’s been an exercise in devolving leadership and developing a new way of thinking – right across the project team. 

It’s been important to set clear expectations and know who’s accountable and can make things happen. 

Spreading ownership for different elements of the work will hopefully spread a sense of empowerment and ensure the right reach and impact are achieved.

As a final thought, I think it’s important to highlight that, although numbers are key, there are many other crucial factors to consider as outcomes and impact can’t solely be measured numerically. 

The quality of partnership working and enablement is vital, but less easily ‘measured’.

And it’s important to remember that people care about different things, so answers to a question may vary depending who’s asking and that is the key to an adaptable and responsive approach to system change.
 

There’s no better feeling in the world than seeing your work (and that of your colleagues) of the last five years materialising in front of you.

And that’s exactly what happened last week, when I had the pleasure of joining partners on Canvey Island, Essex, to celebrate our work supporting Uniting the Movement.

Active Essex hosted us at the Waterside Farm Leisure Centre, a fantastic backdrop to see the impact of place-based systemic work.

Activities were being delivered for all ages and adapted to be inclusive for all.

I also heard some brilliantly emotional stories of impact and life-changing journeys from individuals in the community.

On top of that, a panel of system leaders from local health and government organisations, as well as Sport England, spoke about how this way of working is creating lasting change and is enabling us all to focus unashamedly on the people that have most to gain from being active.

It was a brilliant day and the perfect platform for launching the expansion of our place partnerships.

We are now ready to grow this as a movement across the country.

We all know how tough life is right now. Particularly prevalent is the cost of living, which is forcing individuals, families and communities to make difficult choices which ultimately means the decision to be active is becoming harder and harder.

For many, though, the cost-of-living crisis isn’t a new phenomenon – it’s just even tougher than ever before and this means that our collective work hasn’t just got bigger, but even more crucial.

We have to find a way, as partners in places, to come together and share our resources behind a common purpose and agenda, to better serve those communities that for too long have been left behind by our sector.

We all appreciate the physical and mental health benefits we receive when we move and this should be an opportunity for everyone, no matter who they are and where they live.

I mentioned that we will be taking a targeted approach that is needs-led in 80-100 places.

However, we want to provide an offer to all – it’s our ambition that all places work in this way and take a systemic approach to these issues.

That’s why we're developing an enhanced ‘Universal Offer’.

This will be an easily accessible suite of tools, resources, investment and support.

Please watch this space for more information on this in the coming weeks and if you are interested in helping us to shape this offer for the future then please complete this short form.

I really hope you want to come on this exciting journey with us.

If we can collaborate and not compete, if we can start with lived experience and build on local assets, if we can focus our collective resources towards those that need it most – then I truly believe by Uniting the Movement in places, we can create a more active and healthier nation.
 

Being active is not just good for our physical health. It has the power to do so much more!

It can, for example, reduce anxiety or stress and improve our confidence or self-esteem.

But when being active it’s important for us to feel safe and confident that our welfare is paramount. That’s why club welfare officers exist.

Club welfare officers are roles undertaken across clubs in England by incredible volunteers who make a vital contribution to community sport.

They are responsible for managing welfare issues and putting safeguards in place in their clubs.

They need to work carefully in a potentially sensitive area, so it’s no surprise that hands don’t always shoot up to take on the role.

But we’re planning to change that and we’ll know we’ve been successful when, as one national governing body of sport (NGB) pointed out, ‘it won’t be the last role filled at a club’s annual general meeting’.

The Whyte Review into British Gymnastics, published in July 2022, spoke to the safeguarding responsibility delegated to volunteers at a regional/local level.
 

Consequently, Sport England published its policy response with UK Sport in January 2023, which included a proposal to fund a new, professional network of sport welfare officers across England.

A proposal grounded in our strategy, Uniting the Movement.

In June 2023, the plan became a reality when our board approved a new investment of £14.83 million from October 2023 until March 2027.

This support will create a network of up to 59 sport welfare officers, based in and employed by the network of 42 Active Partnerships who will promote good practices and safe sport.

But the investment itself is not the story of this blog.

The story is what took place between February and June of this year, and continues now, in order to get to that investment.

Since February I’ve created, led and continue to lead a project group of 28 colleagues from across the sport sector to co-design the sport welfare officers project.

I’m thankful to have the expertise of nine NGBs, six Active Partnerships, the Active Partnerships National Team, the Ann Craft Trust, the NSPCC’s Child Protection in Sport Unit and five Sport England teams.

In case you’re wondering, we all get on great. The teams challenge but support each other and are driven by what’s best for the project.

I’m also especially thankful to have had expertise of the club welfare officers from three NGBs: Badminton England, British Triathlon and Table Tennis England.

They volunteered their time on sunny summer evenings (when they could have been at their clubs rather than at their computers) and I was grateful when they green-lit the project.

While club welfare officers work in their local clubs, the sport welfare officers will mentor and support club welfare officers of their respective Active Partnerships across their county (or sub-region).

They will bring club welfare officers from different sports together to share good practices, prioritise visits to local clubs or events and work closely with other sport welfare officers, NGBs and wider organisations.

They will also connect people working on welfare and safeguarding, both inside and outside sport, but they will not, however, manage cases.

That’ll remain the responsibility of NGBs.

To do this, the sport welfare officers will have relationship building and communication skills, and professional welfare experience.

They will receive support locally from their active partnerships and, centrally, from the Active Partnerships National Team.

They will contribute to a culture of good practice, with safer club environments for those taking part in sport.

In turn, those safer spaces will lead to inclusive, improved experiences for children and adults, and narrowed inequalities in sport.

At Sport England we are ready to step forward and create this change.

It won’t guarantee that club welfare officer roles aren’t the last ones filled in clubs across England, but what matters most is these incredible volunteers will be better supported and connected thanks to the sport welfare officers project, and we'll all be better for it.
 

“[Climate change] is the defining issue of our age and the central challenge of our century” – António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

In 2022, two global conferences (COP27 on climate change and COP15 on biodiversity loss) provided profound moments of reflection for world leaders.

Discussions around the knock-on effects of political unrest, increasing living costs, the reintroduction of coal-fired energy suppliers, and declines in wildlife populations sparked further powerful reminders for immediate action.

We wanted to understand more about how things work (and sometimes don’t) in our place and the conditions needed to reduce inactivity and narrow inequality through system change.

The maze just seemed like the natural place to start the most recent phase of Navigating Local Systems (NLS) in Wakefield.

The NLS work is one of Sport England’s test and learn approaches aiming to drive real change within a system. 

Stage one taught us that sometimes you have to go around in a big circle, learning all the way, to fully understand your starting point.

By the start of this current stage, we had figured out that how we did things was important.

There are sometimes limited options on what you do, but how you do it is only as limited as your thinking.

This has been the basis for everything we’ve done since the maze.

Learnings and considerations

Since then, we’ve had people using Cluedo cards to talk about working in an asset-based way, we’ve been on an asset treasure hunt taking photos of our local treasures and sharing them in a WhatsApp group; we’ve made and worn different hats to consider sustainability challenges from different perspectives; we’ve blindfolded ourselves and navigated the funder/provider/participant experience; we’ve planted sunflower seeds in a community allotment while talking about the big things that could grow from small beginnings; and we’ve told and heard personal stories about our relationship with physical activity.

People know when they come to a ‘conversation’ we’ve arranged that there are a few things we hold dear:

• The quality of the invite and the meeting environment is important (quality doesn’t mean expensive!) just as it is in our social lives.
• Putting people in different spaces and situations puts them in a different mindset.
• We try to be specific with people about why their individual contribution is valued, sometimes this means following up with people to say ‘hope you’re able to come because we know you’re great at…’.
• We snowball (even in summer) - we invite people and we ask them to bring a friend, and it’s never too late to get involved.
• We connect personally to the work and each other - we try to build a sense of friendship and team.
• There’ll always be some modelling of different approaches that people can take away and try in different contexts.
• There’s always an opportunity to be a bit active.

We evaluated what we were doing and got positive feedback: people told us our engagement methods were different; people learned new facilitation approaches and told us they would use them back in their own work; people had connected outside of the conversations; we heard we are great system conveners. A-Mazing!

We’d laid some strong foundations, and people were on board and acting as allies.

We were riding high on that good old rollercoaster! And then there was this: ‘Honestly it was genius, but ...’

We heard that to keep moving forward we need to figure out how to keep momentum between the group conversations; turn the small shoots of collaboration into something stronger; define a clearer common purpose that places sport and physical activity more prominently; and continue to define and align objectives so that our contribution knits into the fabric of the other big pieces of work happening in the district.

Challenge accepted!

And this is where the journey is taking us next, we need to keep navigating the whole-system maze, riding Oblivion and sometimes getting the jump leads out to re-start the car.

But we know we’ll get there because we’ve filled a few potholes in along the way, we’ve got some clear way-markers, and we’ve got some great people willing to help draw the map.
 

This is a key challenge when building our social movement 'we can move'.

Working with the Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) West (part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research), we developed ways to measure the growth and impact of the movement.

One method which proved to be very successful was ripple effects mapping (REM).

REM is an interactive and engaging way of understanding the wider intended and unintended impacts of a project or programme over time.

You can find out more about the mechanics of REM through our recently published paper on how REM can be used to navigate the rivers of system change, and through the Putting it into practice resource by Sport England, which includes examples of other approaches, models and tools used by places to support a whole-system approach.

Over the three years I’ve worked at Active Gloucestershire, I’ve tested a variety of ways to capture the wider impact of our work and that of our network.

Often, the cause of failure was the level of additional administration required in recording the impact. But REM involved fun, interactive workshops and created an opportunity to bring people together to discuss what had happened.

This reduced the admin elements of capturing data, and also increased the quality of the learnings through the additional insight from the discussion between the participants.

Still, this method does have a few challenges:

• Firstly - recognising and accepting that much of the impact will be invisible to us and communicating that the findings from REM is a small snapshot of the wider impact is key.
• Secondly - how much detail do we capture? This is an area we are still testing and is often influenced by the aims of the project being evaluated.
• Thirdly - if REM is run with only internal staff, the wider impacts captured will be limited. The strength comes from bringing a wide range of people who are involved in or impacted by the project.

Using it in practice

At the time of writing this, we are building up to hosting our first 'we can move' network event to bring people from across the movement together, so the attendees can make new connections and pledge to incorporate physical activity in their work to make Gloucestershire a happy and healthy place to live and work. 

We are using REM to measure the success and impact of this.

The workshops we have run so far have all been internal. And whilst the wider impacts captured are currently limited, they have facilitated a safe space for our team to share their thoughts on developing the event and initial feedback from their networks.

This has helped shape and improve the planning of the event and ensure everyone has clarity on their role, whilst building up a range of consequences and outcomes we are expecting from the event.

To manage the challenge of bringing people together to capture the wider impacts, we are providing opportunities during the event to share feedback and their pledges, then following this up with a post-event survey.

A purposeful engagement strategy for our team will follow, to utilise our relationships with attendees to capture longer-term impacts.

These will allow us to map out the intended and unintended consequences from the event and visualise any change in size and strength of 'we can move'.

REM has created a lot of excitement for capturing impact, not only at Active Gloucestershire, but with our partners – both locally and nationally.

It has become a core part of our evaluation toolkit and ARC West has developed a useful suite of training videos to help other organisations use it.

I’m excited to watch it develop and demonstrate impact further as more organisations discover it and use it.
 

Black Majority Churches in the West Midlands

A YMCA in Wolverhampton hosted the first BMC in the West Midlands in 1953. Known as the Black Country, due to the rich coal seam that sat just below the surface of the ground, the increasingly industrial region attracted a range of communities seeking work opportunities.

Today, the percentage of Black and South Asian people living in the Black Country is higher than the national average.

These are communities who are more likely to report living with impairments or long-term health conditions and more likely to experience discrimination than their white British peers.

As a result, it’s perhaps unsurprising that activity levels have historically been low in the region. However, a thriving network of Black Majority Churches came together with the local Active Partnership, Active Black Country (ABC) to change this through the Get Out, Get Active (GOGA) approach in 2020.
 

Mobilising Black Majority Churches through the Get out, Get Active approach

GOGA is a national programme that has helped more than 30,000 disabled and non-disabled people enjoy the benefits of being active together.

Delivered in partnership with Activity Alliance and a range of other organisations, GOGA takes place in 21 location across the UK, including the Black Country.

ABC is running a three-year GOGA programme that explores the potential of faith centres to reach the most inactive disabled and non-disabled residents.

Set to launch in early 2020, the project had to rapidly adapt to changing needs of local communities amid the first wave of coronavirus (Covid-19.

In its early stages, Bethune Smith (ABC’s faith and activity co-ordinator) worked alongside the newly formed consortium of black-led churches (Churches 4 Positive Change) to oversee the distribution of activity packs and exercise guides to help local congregations stay active during lockdown.

The programme expanded significantly throughout the course of the pandemic, engaging faith leaders from a range of backgrounds and cultures.

Resulting in yoga classes in Sikh gurdwaras, chair-based exercise classes in Black Majority Churches, and a range of cross-community outdoor activities when coronavirus restrictions allowed.
 

Closing the Gap - inequalities in sport and physical activity

Over the summer, Sport England hosted webinars with colleagues from Active Black Country and the GOGA national programme as part of our #CloseTheGap2022 events - a series of workshops and conversations dedicated to tackling inequalities in the sport and physical activity sector.

In the Active Black Country webinar, we heard how GOGA harnessed the potential of faith-based networks to engage black communities who had otherwise struggled to be active.

We’re so impressed with the cultural competency demonstrated by Bethune, Mike and the team that we wanted to celebrate their successes as part of this year’s Black History Month.
 

For our second hosting in 2018, we supported community and sports clubs to open their facilities along the route and invite the community in.

This enabled us to build numerous 'mini fan zones' to watch the race on tv, and live as it passed by, and also helped organisations reach new audiences.

Many of them are still hosting coffee mornings to bring the elderly together in their community as a result of the original event.

Key things to consider

Getting involved however, does not happen overnight and you will need to plan and prepare well before the event to maximise the impact.

Try making this as seamless as possible and remove what we call ‘sludge’.  

Sludge is anything that makes accessing your club or activities hard, or is a potential barrier for people to take part.

This can be as simple as contact numbers not being updated on your website, or promotional material using very technical language that is difficult to understand.

Organisations will also need to be prepared  for the anticipated influx of new members, and this will require you to plan months ahead.

Many of these large events are planned for years in advance, so get involved in discussions early as you will need to replicate this.

Think about:

• training and developing volunteers ahead of the event
• how you organise introductory sessions - think about giving free tasters
• having a welcoming face to meet and greet new participants and members.

The hardest step for someone coming to an activity for the first time is the first step, and you need to make this as easy as possible.

As council officers, we need to consider our role in this process, plan alongside our community clubs and groups and, where possible, fund the training of volunteers and release other resources to help grassroots organisations.

For example, in Doncaster we developed a very simple micro grants scheme that enabled us to support 33 groups (11,000 people), many of which were previously not engaged, and help them engage in TDY and UCI Road World Championships.

To help clubs, professionals, and event organisers, Get Doncaster Moving are just about to launch the GAMEPLAN book, which brings all our learnings into one easy-to-use guide. 
 

There’s a fundamental ambition through all of our legacy planning that I wanted to hone-in on here.

That is to focus resource on where it’s most needed and can have the biggest impact.

That means an unrelating commitment to ensuring the funding reaches deeper and wider than it has in the past.

All of our resource is through the lens of tackling inequalities, supporting those that have the most to gain but often the hardest journey to find sporting opportunities that are affordable, accessible and responsive to where people find themselves.

We won’t always get this right and we are on a journey rather than arriving at the end at this point and have much to learn.

But we’re keen to challenge ourselves, and the partners we’re working through, to continually ask if we’re listening deeply to what communities are saying? Are we co-creating with and not doing to? Are we recognising and building on the assets in place, particularly the passion, lived experience and knowledge to know what is best?

We’ve seen some of the NGBs we’re working with, seeking to collaborate with local partners and stakeholders and with a passion to do things differently to create new sustainable opportunities and make existing opportunities more accessible.

Ultimately if we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got.

The Games is a catalyst to do things differently and embed a new way of supporting people to access the benefits of an active lifestyle, but in a way that works for them on their terms as opposed to being offered short-term, top-down approaches that don’t have the ownership to be sustained.

We’ve learnt this from the last four years of our place-based working across the organisation and now have an opportunity to embed that learning through our approach to legacy. 

Our investment over the next 18 months should create the foundations for how we want to work locally and with partners in Birmingham and the West Midlands in the future.

There are lots of partners and stakeholders that have fabulous energy, commitment, knowledge and influence, and we want to work with you to realise the benefits that sport and physical activity can have.

If we can harness the collective ambition through a shared sense of purpose and with an unrelenting commitment to making a difference, we can deliver on our Uniting the Movement ambition to get more people to move more and all the benefits that brings.
 

One initiative in particular encompasses this approach. Our National Governing Body Participation, Innovation and Digital programme has really challenged both ourselves and stakeholders to think differently.

That's why we’re talking, but more importantly listening, to communities, grassroots organisations, local sports clubs, local volunteers and other partners to understand their priorities, what works and where investment is most needed.

More specifically, in terms of volunteering, we’re working with the six Active Partnerships across the West Midlands to develop local youth social action placements for young people who might not normally volunteer at a major event, to enable them to support their community and peers into sport and activity. 

We’re also investing in the next generation of talent to help develop coaches and athletes of the future – with a particular focus on talent from backgrounds that are historically under-represented, so the sport sector and our national teams better reflect modern British culture.

With a strong focus on young people, we’re extending our investment into the School Games this year to see even more children and young people get active.

This investment was officially kicked off in February with a live assembly in Liverpool, and this programme will help towards engaging with and encouraging more children to get involved in the School Games, offering a wider range of physical activity and providing extra resources for schools, alongside supporting the School Games National Finals to take place in September 2022.

Before that though, the Queen’s baton relay will land in England in June as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations – working its way around the country to arrive at the Alexandra Stadium on 28 July as part of the opening ceremony.

So, with 100 days to go and our legacy work in full swing, the Commonwealth Games bring with them the unique opportunity to both celebrate the now and build for the future.

We hope you’ll join us in looking forward to a great summer and, wherever you are, think about how you could maximise the opportunity the Games bring in your community this year.
 

We could say we were inspired by figuring out new ways of learning. But that would be a lie.

For the most part we were inspired by what we read and the shared ideas that came out of our conversations about the reading.

Gradually, and without a plan to do so, these shared ideas were committed to paper, and eventually formed the report we release today.

Our primary conclusion is that we can learn as much, if not more, from our mistakes as from our triumphs, if indeed there are any triumphs.

While we aren’t paid to make mistakes; they do happen. But we are paid to be clear about our choices in making decisions regarding public expenditure.

Clarity about decisions will result in transparency about mistakes. If the mistakes are going to be reported, we had better learn from them.

The learning, by default, becomes as important as the outcomes we are trying to achieve. 

Our report is short and sure. The reality of life is more complicated. That much is clear from the series of podcasts and blogs we will be releasing over the next four months to accompany the publication.

Our hope is you will read, listen and reflect. Write to us and tell us what you think at: [email protected] or on social media using #HowToBeWrong. 

If there is sufficient interest, we may reconvene one more time to reflect on what has been learned.

If not, we may deduce that our ideas, like so many others, are simply wrong.
 

Together, these findings from Moving Communities demonstrate why we must reflect on both the challenge and the opportunity.

We cannot just reopen facilities and expect a full recovery, we must change how we and others invest in them to deliver services that are relevant and accessible.

That is why we were privileged to convene several discussions with our sector in recent weeks to review Moving Communities’ findings and expand on the thinking demonstrated by new reports like the ‘Securing the future of public sport and leisure services’ report produced by the Association of Public Service Excellence, the Local Government Association and Chief Leisure Officers Association, as well as ukactive’s ‘Decade of Change for Public Sector Leisure’ and Swim England’s ‘A Decade of Decline’.

Our sector shares a vision of facilities for sport and activity that drive health and wellbeing within each neighbourhood and is developing ambitious new plans to tackle inequality, support climate targets and level up in our communities.

To safeguard the future of public leisure with a renewed sense of purpose at its heart, we’ve found a strong appetite for collaboration among local authorities, leisure operators, community sport organisations and others to develop new thinking and products, leadership skills and advocacy we’re committed to supporting.

In response, my colleagues and I have been proactive, outlining this vision to government to help inform decisions in their upcoming spending review.

Early in the new year we also hope to publish detailed findings from our work during the pandemic, alongside a unified vision for the future of public leisure that delivers sport and activity’s potential to transform the lives of people and communities.

It will be a key part of how we make Uniting the Movement a reality.

In the future, these services won’t always look the same as they have in the past, and nor should they.

But going forward, I know the Moving Communities platform will help local leaders and champions of sport and activity to not just recover public leisure, but to remake it for their communities.

With the step two of the government's roadmap out of coronavirus (Covid-19) restrictions beginning next week, we've spoken to a local authority representatives about their experiences during lockdown and what they've learnt over the last year and how the National Leisure Recovery Fund is helping them to reopen. 

Here, we talk to Ken Miles, chief executive of North Devon Council, and the District Councils' Network's lead for enhancing quality of life, councillor Dan Humphreys.