Active Through Football

In July 2020, we wrote to stakeholders across 50 local authority areas to make them aware of their opportunity to apply for Active Through Football investment.

To support our shortlisting, we created a strategic mapping tool that utilised deprivation, physical activity levels and socioeconomic group data to identify the highest concentrations of our target audiences across the country in each local authority area. 

This mapping provided us with a shortlist of 50 local authority areas spread across the
country where we wanted to engage stakeholders and share further details.

Following a competitive application process through to the summer of 2021, the decision was made that targeted revenue investment would initially be invested in 13 Places over the next five years, with an aim of tackling some of the inequalities that make certain communities less active than others. Given the quality of applications received, it was clear there was a need to deliver this work more widely and further investment was secured for an additional 12 Places to join the programme in Spring 2022.

Successful consortia from the following 25 Places are all now actively delivering their projects. Each consortium has an appointed lead organisation which is also shown below:

The answer to tackling these inequalities doesn’t sit with one organisation! For the biggest impact to be achieved, we know that collaboration is key.

For that reason, shortlisted areas were challenged to establish a consortium made up of a broad range of organisations who cut across sectors and understand their audiences and communities, including local community organisations.

For those areas successful with their application, organisations are now working in partnership with one another to share their learning and expertise around the people and place they’re engaging. It is hoped that the membership base and structure will grow and develop organically with each project, supporting them to deliver against the programme outcomes.

Here is what some of our consortia think of the process so far:

‘We held a number of local conversations to gain insight for the application. The leadership was distributed across a number of partners and we gained some really good knowledge. This is the impact of a consortia approach.’ – Active Partnership

‘With cuts to funding it is impossible to work alone so working with the consortium members provides an opportunity to collectively make a difference.’ – CCO

‘There is a genuine commitment from key organisations. It does not appear to be a tokenistic approach from the consortium locally.  The work in gathering local insight and building community relations through the preparation of the application was impressive.’ – Educational Establishment

Having a diverse group from a variety of backgrounds and experience and looking at a bottom up approach rather than a top down. Allowing the project to be led by real people that it will have the greatest impact on. Local Authority Sports Development Team

The programme has adopted a ‘bottom up’ approach to working with communities. Our evidence shows that the best community projects are designed and delivered in partnership with the community, and communities are more likely to take part in activities and use facilities if they’ve been included in the development. That is why community engagement has been placed at the heart of this approach and used to inform all projects.

For us, community engagement is about talking, listening, and working with people to understand their needs and build relationships and trust. This should be an ongoing process that includes the community in the design and delivery of activities and facilities leading to a greater level of community ownership.

We’ve developed a Community Engagement Toolkit to support projects looking to work this way.

Here are some examples of the target audiences the projects are working with:

• Young Mothers
• People with a learning or physical disability
• South East Asian Women aged 21-50
• 16-29 year-olds who are unemployed
• New and emerging communities
• Pakistani men
   

It’s in communities, and organisations within them, where the inequalities specific to that area can be best understood, and where the best prospects of tackling them lie.

Consortia members have identified a place or a small number in which they’ll work. A plan for the place will be implemented which focuses on working with the community to activate a range of key settings, predominantly through the delivery of recreational and informal small-sided football. Over time, the plan will support the development of a local workforce so communities can take on the delivery of activities long term and facilitate groups to self-organise, to support long term sustainability.