You can find out all about the
Active Universities fund,
its aims and the criteria for applications
on
our funding pages.
Sport England has announced a £10 million National Lottery funding
round,
Active Universities, aimed at increasing the number
of university students playing sport regularly by 100,000.
Our Chief Executive, Jennie Price, was joined
by Olympic Silver medalist, Heather Fell, and the Secretary of
State for Culture, Media and Sport, Ben Bradshaw for the launch in
Sheffield. Dozens of students from Sheffield Hallam University were
on hand to show the fun and friendship they get from playing
sport.
With just under three in 10 university
students currently playing sport at least three times a week,
Active Universities is a drive to create accessible sporting
opportunities for the 72% who say they would like to do more sport.
It is the third of our competitive themed rounds aimed at
addressing challenges to grassroots sport and opportunities to
increase participation.
“We know that young adults who are playing
sport regularly by the time they leave university are likely to
stick with it for the rest of their lives”, said Jennie Price.
“That’s why this themed round will really boost our drive to change
the nation’s sporting behaviours, and why I’m urging people to come
forward with innovative ideas to increase student
participation.
“There’s already a strong tradition of
competitive sport within universities, but this is a big
opportunity to increase participation through more informal and
social formats.”
We’d like to see universities engaging with a
range of partners in developing innovative bids that will tackle
the barriers to student participation such as:
- An insufficient number of coaches,
volunteers and co-ordinators to increase and sustain student
participation
- Over-structured and inflexible
sporting provision within universities which doesn’t cater for all
students, particularly those who don’t want to compete for their
university
- A failure to replicate the sporting
opportunities that young people had previously enjoyed at sports
clubs in their local community
- Capacity issues at universities that
don’t have sports facilities on their sites and haven’t yet formed
partnerships with other providers. Research shows that nine out of
10 university sports halls are at capacity during term time.
You can find out all about the Active
Universities fund, its aims and the criteria for applications
on
our funding pages.
Active Universities opens for
applications on 29 March 2010 and will close on 23 June 2010. We
are holding four pre-application workshops on 7 April in Bristol, 9
April in London, 15 April in Birmingham and 19 April in
Manchester.