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Leaders in Place Expansion Partnerships
Sport England are excited to be partnering with 80 new places in England through our Place Partnership investment.
We’re focusing our resources on the communities that need it most, the areas with higher inactivity and inequality levels and other social need indicators.
While there are some similarities between places, each place has its own unique communities, structures, assets, geography, challenges and opportunities.
Our pilot work has shown that when understood and used in the right way, these local identities and structures can be central to unlocking sustainable solutions to creating more active cultures, behaviours and environments.
Local leaders have a pivotal role to play in helping to tackling inequalities and inactivity in their place.
“Without nurturing and supporting leaders across the system, it’s difficult to create local networks that link up different parts of it”
Sport England
Our offer
Our place-based leadership courses support leaders who are working to tackle inequalities in sport and physical activity in the 80 new Place Partnership areas. They bring together local leaders from across the public, third and private sectors to develop and strengthen local relationships and share learning.
Participating leaders are supported to enhance their understanding, confidence and skills in systems leadership, trialling new approaches and co-designing practical applications to tackling inequality and inactivity. Our facilitators work closely with a local coordination teams from the Place Partnership to plan each course and meet the unique needs of the place and leaders. Each course is fully funded by The National Lottery.
Two-day, in person course, delivered in community settings, by our expert facilitators.
Attendees will benefit from the support of Lead and Co Facilitators, experienced in understanding the principles and application of systems change and group learning.
Follow up sessions are held three and six months after the course.
This helps to sustain momentum, providing opportunities to update on progress, reflect on learnings, track impact, maintain connection and engage with other areas of Leading the Movement.
Designed to strengthen and distribute local leadership capacity
Our courses aim to help leaders to facilitate change across local systems to help address inequality in sport and physical activity. It provides leaders with:
- An introduction to systems leadership principles and practice.
- A chance to form place-based network relationships and share learning.
- A starting point, or catalyst for more, place based whole systems working.
Supporting leaders to collectively:
- Learn and understand more about the national and local contexts they’re operating within.
- Gain a greater shared understand of the existing local assets (buildings, community, venues, parks, open spaces, people) that can be used to support physical activity.
- Consider the complexity of physical activity (and inactivity) habits and behaviours, and the different local systems that influence them.
- Consider the role and importance of leaders at all levels in their place.
- Feel more confident to influence upwards and make collective decision that support people being active.
- Think about ways in which decision making can be distributed, with more contributions from more people to better reflect the lived experience of local communities.
- Hear examples and case studies from other places who have used place-based and whole system approaches to activate change.
- Feel empowered about how they can act in the system, identify leverage points, establish and strengthen local networks, build common purpose and influence others.
What other leaders have said about our place-based leadership courses:
‘The facilitators we worked with were excellent. They worked closely with us to develop the content for both places and to tailor the training to the audience whilst also being flexible across the two days… I would certainly recommend places take advantage of the training to support place based work but also wider system change work.’
Jade Scott, Strategic Lead for Place at Rise North East
‘The programme has been of great value to Move Together Blackpool, bringing system leaders together from across the place to have new conversations and connect.’
Laura Ivinson, Programme Manager at Move Together Blackpool
Access the course
If you’re working in a Sport England new Place Partnership area, please contact your Sport England relationship manager for more information on the course. The programme is fully funded by The National Lottery – there is no charge to attend. Leaders are expected to engage with the course evaluation after participating, to support its ongoing development.
If you like the sound of this course, but you’re not working in a Place Partnership area, it’s worth checking out our ‘About us’ page to see what else is on offer.