Cath Bishop’s article on making sport fun again for children (Sportblog, 26 June) will have struck a chord with many working to inspire young people to be more active. I work for a small charity focused on boosting people’s health and wellbeing through access to outdoor spaces and activities. In the area of London where we are based, north Southwark, we have seen how easy it is for children and young people to miss out on physical activity. The majority of our local families live in flats, and the schools nearby have limited space for children to play.
This, coupled with the rising cost of living, means that just giving a new activity a go can be a struggle, and if you want to pursue a sport, the effort required can add a huge amount of pressure. There’s no room for fun.
We’ve worked hard to inspire children and young people to stay active by making sure that we offer a wide range of low-cost or free activities run by passionate, experienced coaches. Most importantly, just as Cath discussed, we are led by the children themselves. We now offer 10 free sports sessions a week, all requested by young people – they asked for rollerskating, so we have rollerskating, they asked for boxing, so we have boxing.
We’ve seen that empowering children to design their own sports activities encourages them to take part more readily.
Jack Harrison
Head of sport and development, Bankside Open Spaces Trust
• Re Cath Bishop’s brilliant article, “coaching” is becoming a huge field, but sadly it seems to be about the coaches themselves and not the children who are being coached. Fun should be at the heart of everything a child does, whether alone or with friends, and the need for play is greater than ever. Too much adult involvement in youth sports is taking away its spontaneity and it is now being governed by space, rules and time.
Free play is the most cheered aspect of our Football Fun camps, and the children enjoy the time to self-govern, as coaches step back and observe. It gives children the ability to learn without the need for adult involvement.
There needs to be a big shift in how we look at youth sport, because the more structured it becomes, the less enjoyable it will be, and children will slowly start to drift away from it.
Joseph Quigley
Head coach, Football Fun Factory
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