My reflections this month draw upon the importance of sharing and learning.
In my role I am very fortunate to engage with so many talented people who inspire me and my team with their ideas, knowledge, and willingness to share. I believe that the many positive breakthroughs we have in using physical activity to improve outcomes in health, wellbeing, and communities across Essex, and especially in our levelling up areas, is also my responsibility to share.
More and more, I think that the challenges of working across different systems and with multiple partners is completely worth the effort. As physical activity emerges as a priority for so many more organisations, it increases the audiences we can reach, enabling more focused resources to be developed. Ultimately this all contributes to ensuring more families and communities can be active.
All of this can only be achieved by an openness to sharing, and not protecting our expertise or resources in silos. That is why I am leading Active Essex to focus on two main drivers for success – firstly the importance of building trusted relationships, the second doing our work in a collaborative place-based way. Both approaches can only happen if all the key stakeholders are willing to share and learn from each other so we can co-design place-based solutions side by side with our local communities.
Active Essex highlighted the importance of bringing the system together to reconnect and understand our positioning, by holding a networking event with over 150 organisations last week with one sole intent – to share and learn. We deliberately did not have a parade of keynote speaker after keynote speaker, and instead, created the space to enable time to network, to share, and to learn. It was inspiring to witness the energy created by an event like this and I am committed to doing more to create so much innovative sharing and learning over the next few years, both digitally and in-person. For me, it has demonstrated the fundamental role Active Essex should play, as I am convinced that it is the catalyst for success and impact.
