Take Part in a Sport Participation Group
We can run a short online or in-person participation group workshop for your club or group.
It’s an opportunity for sport participants to talk openly about how it feels to take part in your sport. We’ll invite them to explore what they enjoy, while also thinking about how effectively your club or group champions their health and wellbeing.
These informal discussions could help improve communication among your participants. They may also give you some insights into how you can make your club or group more welcoming for everyone.
The Benefits for Your Club
- Give your participants an opportunity to share their thoughts in a safe and judgement-free environment.
- Demonstrate your openness and your willingness to listen.
- Learn what’s going well, as well as some possible areas of improvement.
- Encourage your participants to get to know each other better.
What Happens in a Sport Participation Workshop?
- We can meet online, via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Or if you prefer, we can come to your club and run the group in person.
- One of our Safeguarding Adults in Sport specialists will facilitate the group. They will introduce topics, encourage responses, and ask open questions to keep the conversation going.
- Where possible, we’ll invite a professional athlete to take part in the session too. They will reflect on their experiences in the sport, which could inspire your participants to share their stories.
- It’s a conversation, not a lecture. Throughout the workshop we’ll encourage participants to ask questions, share their thoughts, and discuss whatever matters most to them.
What Happens After the Workshop?
- One of our safeguarding specialists will analyse the responses from participants to identify some key themes.
- You will then receive a report summarising your participants’ thoughts.
- This report will detail everything you’re doing well (so you can keep on doing it!) It will also include some tips on how you can make your club more welcoming.
- Where possible, we can also share some examples of where you can help make your club a safer place, along with some things your participants wish were different.
- We usually also sit down with the group leader afterwards to give them a summary of what has been discussed.
- If necessary, we can arrange an online Zoom meeting with relevant parties to further discuss our observations and insights.
Learn More About Our Sport Participation Workshops
For more information about what to expect from a Sport Participation workshop, listen to this podcast we recorded. In this recording, three of our safeguarding in sport specialists reflect on why we’re running these workshops, and on what we’ve learned from some of our early discussions.
You can also read this report of our preliminary findings from these Sport Participation forums.
Finally, read this introduction to our Voice of the Participant project, and find out how talking to your participants can help you make your sport more welcoming for everyone.
Want To Run A Sport Participation Workshop For Your Group?
To arrange a Participation Workshop for your group, email the project coordinator at Anne.patterson1@nottingham.ac.uk.
We will then get in touch to discuss the best way to engage with your group. This will involve discussing whether your group has any particular ways of working or additional means of communicating. That way we can develop appropriate ways of asking questions – such as with easy-read surveys.
We can then arrange for appropriate days and times to talk to your group.