It’s been a busy few days for the physical activity and sport sector in Essex, with Active Essex facilitating two major events on consecutive days.
Tuesday saw us hold our second in the series of ‘Share-Connect-Collaborate’ networking events, bringing together organisations from across Essex who make up our physical activity and sport eco-system. The event enables everyone to share and learn on latest developments and best practice, as we all pull together to deliver the aspirations of our Essex 10 year strategy, Fit for the Future Essex Fit for the Future Strategy (2021-31)
Held at the carbon-neutral Essex Business School on the University of Essex campus, the networking event brought together over 100 delegates to hear practical examples from across the sector, as well as celebrate achievements and success from the past year. The event recognised the recently launched 2022-23 Active Essex Impact Report and addressed the key issues of place-based working, active travel and active environments, changes to the NHS health system, and the important agenda of ‘People Culture Skills’.
For me, networking leads to the exchange of ideas, helps organisations reach people from all corners of Essex, strengthens relationships, and encourages everyone to try different approaches to inspire people to live an active lifestyle.
The following day, we held our other important event of the week, which looked at the Future of Leisure in Essex, especially the best use of indoor and outdoor facilities and resources. Seeing all the key partners at the event was very pleasing for me.
Public leisure facilities and services play a vital role in our physical activity and sport sector within Essex. Our local authorities in Essex especially play a key role. Since emerging from the pandemic, we recognised the fragile state of public leisure, and this event helped everyone to understand the current landscape and start to agree a mutual set of actions that will lead to a more impactful and sustainable future for public leisure in Essex.
Lucy Wightman; Director of Wellbeing, Public Health and Communities; Karen Creavin, Chief Executive of The Active Wellbeing Society; and Sport England’s Place Directorate, provided some excellent thought leadership on the future of public leisure. I was encouraged by the high-quality debate that followed by all the delegates, and the willingness to work together to achieve a new future for public leisure in Essex.
Following both events this week, it has reinforced my belief that Essex has an incredible set of organisations and stakeholders from the public sector to the private sector and third sector, to meet the key challenges that lay ahead of us, and to keep working together to achieve the ambitions of our Fit for the Future strategy.
If you’d like to explore the Active Essex Impact Report, as mentioned above, click here.
