MENU SEARCH Football Foundation Logo ACTIVE THROUGH FOOTBALL AN EXCITING NEW PROGRAMME FROM SPORT ENGLAND, FUNDED BY THE NATIONAL LOTTERY AND DELIVERED BY THE FOOTBALL FOUNDATION. What is Active Through Football? Active Through Football is our opportunity to learn from doing things differently. By identifying and working with key target audiences, who face some of the greatest inequalities to being physically active, we want to increase activity levels and create sustained behaviour change using a 'Place-based approach.' The programme brings key local stakeholders together as a consortium to create and deliver a plan for their local area or 'Place'. The plans will be based predominately on activating key settings through the delivery of recreational and informal small-sided football activity and developed through community engagement. What we're trying to achieve? INSIGHT Increased understanding of opportunities/barriers for target audience to play football, through community engagement COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP Increased involvement of target audience in design and delivery of activities through ongoing community engagement. INCREASED ACTIVITY Increased activity levels in people aged 16+ from target audience through football. BEHAVIOUR CHANGE Target audience sustain improved long-term physical activity habits through behaviour change. Selecting the Places 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. Successful consortia from the following 13 Places have accepted their Grant Offer. Each consortium has an appointed lead organisation which is also shown below: Shortlisted Area Lead Organisation Barnsley Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council Birmingham Aston Villa Foundation Blackpool Blackpool FC Community Trust Gateshead Gateshead Council Leeds Leeds United Foundation Oldham Oldham Council Plymouth Argyle Community Trust Rotherham Rotherham United Community Sports Trust Southampton Saints Foundation Stockton-on-Tees North Riding FA Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire FA Tameside Active Tameside Wolverhampton Wolves Foundation Working Together 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. Engaging the community 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. Place-based approach 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. Learning is Key We see this programme as our opportunity to learn from doing things differently! Continuously reflecting, refining, and working openly and honestly across the programme is going to be vital to this learning. We have appointed external evaluation partners to help support the learning process. What's next? Working with programme partners, we will develop case studies that will be shared across programme stakeholders and wider as our learning develops. Still have a question? Click below to contact a member of the team. CONTACT US TRANSFORMING COMMUNITY SPORT IN ENGLAND. Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Footer social Twitter NOV 23 "The most important thing about building football pitches is the surface." @LivCookefs's not wrong you know. Chec… https://t.co/Kdam3gYkKJ POWER OF PITCHES Join our mailing list Want to keep up-to-date with all our latest funding opportunities, facility openings, jobs and exclusive interviews? You know what to do. 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