Fictitious sports conference

Today, we were at the fictitious sports conference here in Plymouth and it was a great experience.

I met some really inspirational people and had some great advice.

Here’s the programme for the day:

Friday 17 November, 2017

0900 – Conference registration

0930 -1015 – Keynote: Revisiting the Elite – Community Sport Problematic: Seeking answers in the Government’s ‘Sporting Future’ Document – Dr Jonathan Grix, University of Birmingham

1015 – Coffee

1045 -1200 – Parallel session #1 (three panels – three speakers in each):

1200 – 1315 – Parallel sessions #2 (three panels – three speakers in each):

1315 – 1445 – Lunch / poster presentations / workshop (the academic/practitioner gap)

1445 – 1530 – Keynote: Questions on the future landscape for physical activity: Matt Evans, CEO of Active Devon

1530 – 1600 – Plenary

First session – Revisiting the Elite – Community Sport Problematic: Seeking answers in the Government’s ‘Sporting Future’ Document

There is a perennial problem of, and tension between, community sport rhetoric and elite sport policy priorities. Increasing funding for elite sport has led to greatly improved international success for GB athletes, especially at the Olympic Games yet there would appear to be a dis-connect between this upward trajectory and the ‘flat lining’ or decrease in the number of citizens deemed ‘physically active’.  Despite this, there would appear to be an unshakable belief among policy-makers in the ability of elite sport policy (elite sport development and sports mega-events) to deliver participation objectives. With reference to the UK Government’s most recent sport policy document (December, 2015), ‘Sporting Future. A New Strategy for an Active Nation’, this keynote presentation will examine how this strategy might help overcome this perennial problem?

Thoughts: A really interesting and insightful plenary and I think it sparked some very thought-provoking arguments and discussion.

(The above is copied from the UKSDN conference website and is only for display purposes, it was a real conference, not fictitious – so again this was just to illustrate the kind of news items that a student may want to cover on their blog site)