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Spring 2008
The Spring 2008 newsletter has now been published. It can be accessed on the Newsletters page.
April 2008
Active England dissemination workshop
The evaluation of the Active England programme is drawing to a close. Sport England staff and project staff have contributed to this over the years. There will be half day dissemination workshop hosted by Hall Aitken and Bearhunt.
The workshop will be a chance for Active England projects and Sport England staff to find out what Active England has achieved, lessons learned, good practice examples and advice on bid-writing to win future funding.
Date: Tuesday 10 June 2008
Time: Lunch from 12.3pm. Workshop 1pm to 3.30pm.
Location: Sport England, 3rd Floor Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London WC1B 4SE
Link to map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=Sport%20England&near=London,%20WC1B%204SE&ie=UTF8&ll=51.519165,-0.122073&spn=0.004867,0.009892&t=h&z=17&om=1
To book online please visit the events page on the Hall Aitken website.
December 2007
The Winter 2007 edition of the newsletter has now been published. It includes articles on:
- ValueMapping;
- thematic workshops being held on:
- skateparks/extreme sports; and
- green spaces;
- feedback on previous thematic workshops; and
- 2007 Annual Conferences.
It can be accessed on the Newsletters page.
December 2007
Details of upcoming thematic workshops, and write-ups from previous workshops, can now be found on the Thematic Workshop page under the Documents and Case Studies menu tab.
September 2007
ValueMapping - new Change in Participation KPI
Projects that have chosen to collect the Regular Adult Participation KPI will shortly have a new KPI showing in their Value Map. If you have this KPI, you will have received an email with instructions on how to update this new KPI. These instructions are also available on the Regular Participation Help page on this website.
September 2007
2007 Annual Conference
The handout from the South Active England conference is now available for download from the AELZ Conference page on this webite.
July 2007
2007 Annual Conference
The annual conference for Active England projects will split into two regional conferences this year. The SOUTH conference will take place on Thursday 13th September 2007 at the John Pounds centre in Portsmouth. The NORTH conference will take place on Thursday 20th September 2007 at the Eureka project in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Further information and registration form (PDF format, 657KB)
May 2007
Department of Health - Choosing Health progress report
The public health white paper, Choosing health, published in 2004, set out a commitment to reduce health inequalities and better tailor health and care services to meet individual needs. It set out action that individuals and organisations could take to make this a reality. Since its launch, there has been significant progress over a wide range of areas. As this update report demonstrates, we know more about what works and where to focus effort and have tangible evidence of where action set out in Choosing Health is achieving success.
Choosing health progress report - May 2007
March 2007
The Spring 2007 edition of the Active England newsletter has now been published. It includes articles on:
- ValueMapping support - Do's and don'ts;
- measuring frequency of participation;
- recruiting, retaining and managing volunteers;
- thematic workshops that will help you deliver better projects;
- recruiting members;
- mobile facilities; and
- drivers to innovation.
January 2007
Extract from the 'Evening Courier', dated 17 January 2007
CALDERDALE is starting to shed its reputation as the couch potato capital of West Yorkshire. A survey by Sport England shows that residents are now participating more often in organised sports activities than those in neighbouring areas and the rate is above the national and regional average.
"But that improvement could be undermined if Calderdale Council insists on going ahead with plans to reduce the opening hours of sports centres and swimming pools," according to Halifax Labour MP Linda Riordan. "The council's leisure services department has done a terrific job on a limited budget and cutting opening hours shouldn't even be considered," she said.
In 2005, a survey by the Calderdale Primary Care trust showed that at least one in five adults binged on pastry, sugary food and junk meals, and was clinically obese.
And 45 per cent did less than 30 minutes exercise a week. But a nationwide survey by Sport England, which involved interviews with 1,000 people in Calderdale, shows things have improved. Calderdale has the highest level of participation in West Yorkshire – the percentage of people who took part in three 30-minutes blocks of active recreation each week now stands at 21.8 per cent. Calderdale Council's Conservative leader Ann McAllister this week unveiled a plan to save up to £94,000 a year by closing sports centre and swimming pools when people use them least. The total budget for sport is £1,190,000 and the proposal represents a saving of 4 per cent.
Councillor McAllister (Rastrick) said a detailed assessment of visitor numbers would be needed before any changes were made to opening hours.
The Sport England survey shows that 24.5 per cent of adults in Calderdale are members of sports or sport or fitness clubs, 18 per cent received tuition from a coach or instructor in the past 12 months and 13.8 per cent have taken part in organised competitive sport. But according to the council's head of recreation, Brendan Mowforth: "The most significant result is that 51.3 per cent of people do not take part in any sport and active recreation at all – 53.4 per cent of women and 49 per cent of men."
The figures will be used by the council as a base-line measure of sport activity. "Our overall ambition is a 1 per cent a year increase in levels of sport and active recreation by 2009 when a repeat survey should be carried out."
November 2006
Adam Clarke, Associate Director for Hall Aitken, has published an article in this months Leisure Manager magazine. A copy of this can be accessed at http://www.hallaitken.co.uk/reports/sportsdevelopment.htm. The article gives guidance on monitoring and evaluation of sports development projects.
August 2006
Health news stories from the media:
'Minister for fitness' appointed (link to BBC News website)
Some people can't resist food. New study shows some people just can't resist food
July 2006
New tools have been added to the site to help you measure participation in your project. These include guidance notes on survey methods and data protection, and example survey forms that can be used.
They can be found on the Regular Participation Help page. This is a sub-page of the Tools page, within the Monitoring section.
May 2006
Sport England has launched a new website to support volunteers working in sport. Runningsports has been specifically designed for sport volunteers - whether you want to get started in sports volunteering, are already a volunteer, manage volunteers, or are responsible for volunteering within a sport, county or local authority.
April 2006
The second annual conference for Active England projects will take place on Wednesday 24 May 2006. It will take place in Milton Keynes Hockey Stadium.
Further information and attendance form (PDF format, 322KB)
February 2006
GP referral is the best prescription for better health - A leading medical health expert, Dr Dorian Dugmore, has urged GPs across the country to prescribe physical activity and a healthy lifestyle, in place of pills to some patients. This rally call is the result of Dr Dugmore witnessing patients recovering from various ailments through the prescription of regular exercise.
Sport England are set to host a set of Jogging events in an attempt to increase physical fitness in the nation. This is a part of the Everyday Sport campaign which encourages people to build sport into their everyday lives. Sport England have teamed up with the newly formed Jogathon organisation to host these events, which will also support the careers of budding athletes. These athletes will benefit from the jogging events as the sponsorship money will be channelled into helping local athletes via the SportsAid charity.
January 2006
The Rickter Scale training workshops have now all been organised.
The first workshop took place in Leeds on 11 January 2006 and was a big success.
The second workshop will take place from 9am - 5pm on 3 February 2006 at the London Support Centre.
The third and final workshop will take place from 9am - 5pm on 8 March 2006 at the Sport England offices in Birmingham.
December 2005
A new postcode lookup feature has been added to the Tools section of this site. This allows you to check if a participant qualifies as living in a deprived area. Instructions on using the tool.
November 2005
We will shortly be adding a page linking to project websites. If you would like a reciprocal link to your project included please send the address to Steven Ross.
September 2005
If you have expressed an interest in the Action Learning Sets and have any specific themes you would like discussed, please email these to Moranne Campbell.
August 2005
Final call for Rickter Scale training and Action Learning Sets!
There are very limited spaces left for the Rickter Scale training and Action Learning Sets, so if you are interested please send an email to Moranne Campbell as soon as possible with the following details:
- Your project name
- Your project aim
- Your region
- Your contact details
- Whether you are interested in the Rickter Scale training or Action Learning Sets or both
- Your reason for interest in the Rickter Scale training and/or Action Learning Sets
June 2005
A report on the Annual Conference for Active England projects held on 26 May is now available for download on the AELZ Conference section of the documents page.
June 2005
The Active England Monitoring and Evaluation Guide is now available for download on the Monitoring Guide page in the Monitoring section of this site.
June 2005
We are planning to run training sessions on the Rickter Scale and develop Action Learning Sets soon. These sessions are part of our support to you with monitoring and evaluation techniques.
Rickter Scale Training
As mentioned in the ?measuring qualitative data? workshop at the Active England Conference last month we are running training sessions in how to use the Rickter Scale within your project.
The Rickter Scale is an innovative hands-on assessment and evaluation tool. It is useful to measure less tangible effects of your project such as changes in confidence, motivation etc.
It is a simple hand-held tool that is helps you and your clients focus on current situations, future goals and key actions. It also allows you to measure distance travelled.
For more information on the Rickter Scale see www.rickterscale.com or the monitoring section of this site.
Action Learning Sets:
Action learning is a development opportunity where you have time to focus on what is important to you and your project.
It might be problem solving, strategic management, career planning or managing change. The focus can be individual professional development or organisational development. You meet regularly with a group of peers who will come from various backgrounds. What you have in common is the need for structured time to reflect and to share learning.
Action Learning Sets provide a structured framework through regular meetings that give powerful results:
- Individual learning and personal development
- Problem solving and issues resolution
- Managing change
Interested?
Please e-mail moranne.campbell@hallaitken.co.uk with your details.
Please include details of which activity, your name, name of your project and your region.
At this stage we are only taking a register of interest and will be in touch with a formal booking form, dates and venues.
June 2005
The annual conference for Active England projects took place on Thursday 26 May. Presentation slides are now available for download on the documents page.
May 2005
The Value Map software is still being simplified, along with the project training procedures. We will be contacting projects to pilot the roll-out of the maps shortly to ensure they have the necessary internet software to use the maps.
April 2005
You can download the monitoring cards used at the Nottingham workshop on 4 and 5 April from the Techniques section of the monitoring page. We will add the presentation slides shortly.
