promotingactivity.com in Age Concern magazine
Age Concern magazine have just run an article about promotingactivity.com highlighting how you can use the Strategic Planning tool. I’ve scanned it in, and you can read the full article below.
Headline results from Sport England’s survey of peoples’ satisfaction
Headline results from Sport England’s survey of peoples’ satisfaction with the sports they play have been published. The overall satisfaction has decreased from 80% to 76.5%.
The results are based on responses from 44,960 people age 14 and over in England, who take part in sport regularly. Within each sport, respondents were surveyed from across three groups or levels of engagement with sport – general participants, affiliated club members and the talent pool.
See Sport England full explanation.
Download the headline satisfaction scores.
Old strategic planning tool reports
We’ve had requests from a few users for the old planning tool reports. This is because they included maps of cardio vascular disease (CVD) risk factors of high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
We didn’t include this information in the new Strategic Planning tool because we were told by some data experts at PCTs that the data was inaccurate.
However – if you still wish to access these reports then you can find them at the link below:
Communities on the move: Improving active living in rural North Carolina
The Fit Together Grant Program concluded in 2009. By detailing the impetus for the project, outlining key insights resulting from the initiative, and documenting each of the five rural Fit Together projects in case study format, this report is designed to assist rural communities in promoting active living. (North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, US).
Do mass participation sporting events have a role in making populations more active?
Mass sporting events are becoming increasingly popular worldwide and may have health benefits as they foster low intensity participation in a non competitive, fun environment. We know little, however, about their long term effect, if any, on physical activity levels. This report describes the initial impact of three women only mass events in Ireland as well as the effectiveness of a series of initiatives designed to boost activity among the least active participants.
Bowling and Bouncing in Hillingdon
Below we describe how Hillingdon Council used promotingactivity.com to support their funding bid.
With the help of funding from the London Development Agency’s Play Sport London programme, the Sports Development team at Hillingdon Council was able to launch two new activity programmes – ‘Bounce Back to Fitness’ (trampolining) and ‘Bowled Over’ (indoor cricket). The funding process was managed by PRO-ACTIVE West London.
Using the marketing segmentation toolkits on promotingactivity.com, the Hillingdon team identified two separate demographic groups that they wanted to target – ‘mid life males’ aged 45 to 54 (Philips) and ‘fitness class friends’ aged 18 to 25 (Chloes).
Promotingactivity.com revealed that Philips made up 8.7% of the population in Hillingdon, the second highest percentage of the male population in the borough, and that far more of them actually wanted to take part in physical activity than actually did so. It was also clear that this particular segment of the population has an interest in cricket, so the Hillingdon team decided to set up a winter indoor cricket programme to get people back into playing cricket with a view to carrying it on with a local club during the summer.
The Chloe segment was also well represented in Hillingdon, being the highest percentage of the female population in the borough aged 18 – 25 years. Promotingactivity.com revealed that Chloes want to lose weight and keep fit and like to participate in exercise that they can do with friends. Trampolining was chosen as it ticked all these boxes and the team set up Bounce Back to Fitness in partnership with the Queensmead Trampolining Club (although coaches were not from the club it was identified as an appropriate exit route.)
Although attendances to both activities weren’t quite high enough to justify keeping them going after the initial funded period, the Hillingdon team learned some valuable lessons from using promotingactivity.com.
“The activities weren’t quite as successful as we had hoped, partly because we couldn’t find facilities in the areas of the borough where the toolkits had shown large concentrations of our target groups,” comments Hillingdon Sports Development Manager Lucy Stanton. “Also, with the benefit of hindsight perhaps we should have marketed the activities differently. The toolkits identified Chloe’s in particular as being best contacted by email but because our email database isn’t that large we had to rely on posters and flyers. Email is definitely something we will look to use more of in the future.”
Do you use promotingactivity.com in an interesting way? Let us know.
What photos do we need the most?
We’ve already built a photo library of over 1500 images which can be used for free by anyone promoting activity to the public. (photos.promotingactivity.com/)
We’ve got funding from the Department of Health to organise another photo shoot and we want to make sure that we add images which are helpful to the most people. We know there are gaps, so we want your help to find which of those gaps need filling the most urgently.
To let us know your choices click on the survey link below. We will base the photo shoot on the results of this survey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D6XQLQ3
Love2 2010 programme – interim report
I’ve talked about the Love2 programme before – because I think it’s a great programme which we can all learn from. They’ve also released an interim report for the 2010 programme.
Girls and women in London are on average 10% less likely than men to take part in sport and physical activity and although this gap narrows slightly as participation rates increase, there is still significant inequality across the majority of South London.
PRO-ACTIVE South London (P-ASL) are dedicated to raising awareness of this inequality and therefore encouraged all types of organizations with the ability to deliver sport and physical activity to women and girls to take part in the LOVE2
Programme.
From 8th February to 14th February 2010 (in most cases) PRO-ACTIVE South London facilitated a women and girls sports and physical activity festival across South London branded LOVE2.
PRO-ACTIVE South London offered up to £500 of funding to deliverers of sport to hold an event aimed at women and girls during the LOVE2 week. These events were not just a ‘one off’ event but were a ‘taster’ linked to local, regular ongoing activities promoted to participants during this festival. This funding was provided from Playsport London via their Winter Programme.
The activities were based on at least one of the following themes:
- Have a go- These activities were aimed at women and girls who currently do not take part in any sport or physical activity and for whatever reason have never really participated in sport or physical activity. These sessions provided this group with the opportunity to get involved and ‘have a go’.
- Something different- These sessions were aimed at women and girls who may currently be taking part in some activity but want to try ‘something different’.
- Play again- These activities were aimed at girls and women who have previously taken part in a particular sport or activity whether it be at school, college, club or otherwise. The purpose of these sessions was to reignite the old flame and get them participating again.
Change4Life campaign not finishing
In a recent speech Andrew Lansley (Secretary of State for Health) made it clear that the Change4Life campaign will NOT be coming to an end, contrary to rumours that have been flying around. The quote from him is pasted in below, and you can read more on the Change4Life supporters newsletter or the full transcript of his speech.
“Some of you may have seen recent press coverage suggested that the Change4Life campaign is to be brought to cease. I wanted to reassure you that there are no plans to cease the Change4Life campaign. However, I did make clear in the speech that given the new financial climate I intend to pursue a new approach to the campaign – where investment by the taxpayer will be progressively scaled back and the commercial sector and charities are asked to provide more of the necessary direct investment in Change4Life to sustain the initiative.” Andrew Lansley.
Fixes and improvements to the activity search tool
The latitude/ longitude button on the activity search tool content wasn’t working for a few days. So if you wanted to add a new venue, club or group then you weren’t able to. That has now been fixed. In fact we’ve also simplified this, so you don’t need to worry about latitude/ longitude at all – you just put in the postcode.
We’ve also made a few small improvements to the activity search tool. For example – if there are two groups in the same location (maybe they both use the same sports centre) then they’ll both show up on the map, instead of one appearing on top of the other.
We’ve also added a list option as well as the map option for results, so that people with visual impairments can use the site more easily.
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