CSP: Sport Birmingham
With the Government deciding the invest money into Primary School PE and sport you would think that schools would be able buy new kit and allow their young people to take part in all the activities imaginable, unfortunately due to large areas of deprivation within the city, schools are only just able to make their current provision come up to standard. With the BBC bringing Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) to Birmingham, Sport Birmingham suggested that it would be great to give back to the community, and thus Reclaim was born.
The Reclaim Sports Project and story is somewhat likened to Robin Hood, the idea being that those that had sports kit would give to those that do not. Collaboration between Birmingham City Council Wellbeing Services,, BBC Get Inspired National Team, BBC West Midlands, and Sports Trader.
Each partner took on a different role throughout the project, BBC Get Inspired created the media opportunities as well as bringing the relevant partners together weekly to discuss the project and what the next steps would be. A poster was produced detailing the exactly what we wanted schools and communities to do – ‘Give us your kit’, new, old, used or not we wanted it all.
Cages were sourced from a local Tesco and the BBC provided plastic wraps to cover the cages and provide further advertisement for the project in their placement. BCC and Get Inspired communicated with community venues to place cages, whilst Sport Birmingham
communicated with schools to place cages. Sport Birmingham used a variety of networks to get information out to schools and inspire them to take part, mailing lists, School Games Organisers (SGO’s) and individual contacts. Hillstone Primary School came on board as the flagship school and helped to raise the profile of the project by launching it from their site with BBC WM.
Around 25 schools came on board and were able to fill their cages over a 4 week period, with 30 community venues coming on board. Over 4 weeks the cages were filled with a variety of kit, with some National Governing Bodies also generously giving kit that was brand new.
Once the deadline for kit collection was reached, the cages were collected and brought to a storage unit. A media piece was produced by the BBC in which all of the partners of the project came together to unload the cages and separate the kit into specific piles to make it
easier to distribute. This was attended by Katherine Merry and Lily Owsley both GB athletes with Lily winning a gold medal at Rio 2016 with the ladies hockey team.
Some kit has since been distributed to community groups and England Hockey have given brand new hockey kit to the Oasis Academy Short Heath. This school has really developed hockey within their school through the support of a local hockey club. The headteacher, Michelle Lee, repeatedly spoke of how physical activity, and in particular the hockey club, had really affected her students, especially a student with autism that had really become part of the school community through the club. Seeing the children receive all of their new kit really brought home just how the young people of the Birmingham community really value this project that allows them to take pride in their sport and physical achievements.
The project is now wrapping up, with Sport Birmingham taking lead on an open day allowing schools and community sports hubs to view the available kit and decide what it is that they can make use of in their school. There is every confidence and a strong desire to make thishugely successful partnership an annual campaign.
The video tells it all!!!!!