The last few remaining places are available for south-west England-based organisations to attend the Sport for Development Coalition's first 'hybrid' Town Hall session in person.
Throughout 2022, the Coalition will take the popular sessions to towns and communities around the UK, and be hosted by its member organisations across the regions. Town Halls are designed to provide informal opportunities for a selection of the 200-plus organisations and networks who make up the Coalition to engage on important issues in the sector and drive the Coalition’s collective response to them.
So far two Town Halls have been held online and now, following the relaxation in Covid-19 regulations, the third is set to be held in Bristol on Friday 25th February (1000-1130).
- Read the event programme.
- If you are interesting in attending in person, please contact [email protected]
- To register to participate in the Town Hall online, click here.
It will be a hybrid event hosted by Empire Fighting Chance with a small audience of 25 stakeholders attending in person, and up to 60 people online. The charity’s Chief Executive, Martin Bisp, said: “As a proud member of the Coalition, we are delighted to be hosting the first Town Hall session to be held on and offline simultaneously. We look forward to welcoming other members and partners from South-West England in person, and using this opportunity to drive forward the Coalition’s key principles of collaboration, shared learning and collective action.”
The ‘big issue’ for this Town Hall will be ‘How can sport for development more effectively recruit and retain a diverse, talented, and experienced workforce?’
This follows the previous online events which focused on opportunities and challenges for sport for development around social prescribing and Integrated Care Systems, and how can community sport and sport for development organisations can better contribute to addressing the climate emergency.
The first Town Hall of 2022 will provide an opportunity to examine how can sport for development more effectively recruit and retain a diverse, talented and experienced workforce. Crucially, the event will identify the Coalition’s collective response to issues and opportunities relating to the sport for development workforce.
Workforce development and retention has been raised by Coalition supporter organisations during previous Town Halls. In the last session in November 2021, attendees raised and then discussed workforce capacity during the open forum section and identified three key areas which could be addressed through collective action:
- Training - evolving development and training of staff to meet the needs of participants after the pandemic.
- Recruitment - increase in staff turnover as a result of the pandemic has identified a need to support for recruitment and strategies to retain talent.
- More diverse workforce - strengthening equality, diversity and inclusion in recruitment and retainment of the sport for development workforce.
DISCUSSION
The discussion provided a clear priority for the Coalition’s future collective action, to ‘share further insight, learning and research on how sport for development organisations have – and can more effectively – recruit and retain a diverse, talented and experienced workforce through the development of clear career pathways’. This next Town Hall forms part of the response to this identified action and will build upon priorities and mechanisms identified at the People & Workforce Development Discovery session, taking place at the beginning of February, led by UK Coaching and Sporting People in collaboration with the Coalition.
The Town Hall will include leaders from and outside of the sector as well as experts by lived experience who will provide ‘thought starters’ to initiate the discussion and respond to the central question. This will be followed by a Q&A.
It is hoped that larger in-person audiences can be accommodated at future Town Hall sessions around the UK over the coming months, subject to restrictions and guidelines.
- If you are interesting in attending in person, please contact [email protected]
- To register to participate in the Town Hall online, click here.
