Areas that participate in sport and other leisure activities generally have stronger communities, safer spaces and are largely healthier and happier compared to places without physical activity as a priority.
Sheffield is proud to have some of the best sporting venues in the country, with the English Institute of Sport Sheffield, Ponds Forge, and high profile football clubs.
In our If You Ask Me sport in the community special, a number of different organisations share the brilliant work that they do, who they work with and what benefits they provide.
Sarah Backovic, general manager, Sheffield Sharks
The B Braun Sheffield Sharks are now a familiar name in the city’s sporting scene but it has taken a huge amount of work to get us there.
When the club was formed in the early 1990s – which seems such a long time ago now! – we needed to impact our community – we recognised that we appealed in a way beyond sport.
Basketball is a very popular sport but it is often played under the media’s radar in communities that are often hard to reach. Our priority was to engage with people across our area but in particular those who may have been ignored by what are considered more mainstream sports.
Because we are accessible compared to other sports we could use our athletes to positively engage with all spectrums right through to the disengaged
Underpinning the Sharks community programme is a dedicated classroom run by teacher Sarah Carpenter who is vastly experienced and has positively impacted hundreds of children over many years.
We have been lucky to work with partners on our community schemes who see them more than just a ticking-the-box exercise.
Our named sponsor, B Braun Medical, who are based near our head office in Chapeltown, Sheffield, had a policy for children and came on board to drive a health and well-being agenda using sport as the vehicle.
We began our outreach programme B Healthy B Braun working with 600 primary students a year. The growth was exponential because having access to the likes of Kipper Nicholls, Rodney Glasgow Jr and our head coach Atiba Lyons young people could understand how to use sport to achieve more in life.
Latterly we found as society issues widened and disengaged young people began to be affected by gang culture we introduced a more direct project called Respect Too – supported by Canon Medical Systems.
This enabled the Sharks to work with young people on the periphery of being excluded from school. With a desire to affect behaviour and use the players to encourage sport as a diversionary tactic this has been the most popular with secondary schools with places booked up a year in advance.
Community Manager Marko Backovic has re energised the Sharks in the community. The former player and England international is now an assistant coach with the club and has streamlined the focus to support no less than 1,600 young people a year that benefit from all projects.
We’re proud of the impact we have made and will continue to make in our home city. And, as we look to move into a new venue on the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, our commitment to community projects will be at the heart of everything we do.
Andrew Snelling, chief executive, Sheffield City Trust
Sheffield City Trust, formerly known as Sheffield International Venues, is well known within this vibrant city of sport as the organisation that runs some of the city’s most prominent venues such as Sheffield City Hall, Ponds Forge, the English Institute of Sport Sheffield and the Utilita Arena Sheffield.
The trust however is much more significant than that and as a health and wellbeing charity we’re here for the people of Sheffield to support employability, help the environment and local communities.
Health and Wellbeing is not just about hitting the gym, that’s why we’re so much more than just our venues, we work with the local community through our outreach programmes and our aims are focussed on getting people more active, looking at new ways to engage with key groups in the community and supporting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the people of Sheffield.
We’re working with lots of community organisations across the city to increase participation in activities inside, and outside of our venues in places such as local community centres, schools and care homes. Part of our remit is to work with groups who find it more difficult to access and engage with trust activities and physical activity in general like carers.
It is estimated that there are around 90,000 carers in Sheffield, and we are working with Sheffield Carers and Young Carers enabling them to experience activities like ice skating and discounted access to our venues to provide them with valuable ‘me-time’ away from their caring responsibilities. Our long-standing programmes supporting individuals living with long-term health conditions (Exercise Referral) and with Care Home residents, initially moved to a fully remote delivery model at the beginning of the pandemic have now returned to our venues and are seeing continued growth. Our work with local NHS partners on Long-Covid recovery programmes and activities aimed at specifically supporting mental health conditions is gathering pace as demand continues to increase into 2022.
We’re also continuing to support organisations adjust to new requirements created by the pandemic. The world of work has altered significantly. Working in Burngreave, we provided guidance and support to Reach Up Youth providing valuable employability skills training, resulting in many job offers for young people starting out in tricky times.
We also recognise the importance to mental wellbeing of attending events including music gigs and sporting events. We have a huge programme of concerts planned across the Utilita Arena Sheffield and Sheffield City Hall as well as sports events from local club galas to international competitions across our sports venues.
Alongside this we will continue to cheer the successes of all our resident teams including the Sheffield Steelers and Sheffield Sharks.
Sheffield City Trust is here for everyone, supporting individuals to access activities that improve their health and wellbeing whether that’s working with partner organisations, in one of our venues or in a community setting.
Chris Bailey, head of foundation, SUFC Community Foundation
What do Sheffield United Community Foundation do?
We are the official charity of Sheffield United Football Club, and we are a sports development organisation. Our primary purpose is to use the brand of Sheffield United Football Club and the power of sport to change people’s lives.
Our vision is for Sheffield to be a healthy, empowered, and inclusive community. To help us get there, we generally focus on five key themes: Education, Employability, Health, Inclusion and Participation.
Naturally, being the club’s official charity, it comes with the iconic brand of Sheffield United Football Club – that’s our USP. It gives us the opportunity to engage with supporters, because football is a global language that reaches out to millions of people across the world, and it’s been a cornerstone, an institution in the city for over 130 years – it’s a place that people recognise and feel safe to engage with.
Generally, we are the football club out in the community. Last year we worked in all 29 ward areas of Sheffield, utilising the power of the brand to work in every community that we can and create links with local organisations to give people the opportunities for a better life. We work with several local charities and organisations such as: Weston Park Cancer Charity, Cavendish Cancer Care and Strong Minds Together, as well as Primary Schools and The Sheffield College.
We also work with local community and youth groups for our Premier League Kicks programme which is about using sport and the brand of the Premier League to engage with people in the evenings, in hard-to-reach communities, to give them opportunities.
We’re currently going through our strategic plan for the next three years and it’s clear that the pandemic has changed the way that we work and the world that we currently work in.
The challenges and the inequalities that we are now trying to address are different to what they were pre-pandemic. For example, younger people are looking for support around their mental health, so we’ve really had to shift our focus, still working on physical health and participation, but repurposing our resources to tackle that too.
Sport is the hook and it’s a tool that we use but our work is more than that. We want to improve people’s physical, mental, and social wellbeing so we can address some of the health inequalities in our communities and we want people to have a lifelong positive relationship with sport and/or physical activities.
To learn more about SUFC, visit: sufc-community.com
Gareth Davis, head of region (South Yorkshire), Yorkshire Cricket Board
February may not be a month many people associate with cricket activity but in clubs across South Yorkshire it is a busy time planning junior programmes and preparing for the season, which begins in April.
My role as head of region in South Yorkshire for the Yorkshire Cricket Board is to offer the support clubs need to help them grow and thrive.
Attracting juniors is key to this so we have a number of different initiatives which provide opportunities for young players to take their first steps into the sport or to begin to develop their skills ahead of an introduction to hard ball cricket.
Two of the most popular schemes are All Stars cricket for 5-8 year olds and Dynamos, which is aimed at 8-11 year olds and is based around the Hundred tournament.
Last summer we had 1,619 little All Stars running across the outfields around our clubs and almost 600 Dynamos. For Dynamos 2021 was its first summer, so this was a very good return and we hope to see even more this year.
We have coaches with responsibility for different areas of South Yorkshire and they work hard to visit as many schools as possible via the Chance to Shine programme.
More than 1,600 hours of cricket was coached across 50 schools and, most pleasingly, there were more than 1,400 girls who took part.
The development of women and girls cricket is vital to the continued growth of our game and it is receiving strong backing from the England Cricket Board. Early this month the England Women’s team will conclude their Ashes tour against Australia.
The women’s game is increasingly fully professional at the top level and girls can now see a pathway to making a career out of the game.
We’ve seen a big growth in girls taking part with 516 on the All Stars programme and 212 on Dynamos, which is around a third of total participants.
At the older level we are increasing the number of women’s leagues across South Yorkshire – these are both at soft ball and hard ball – so there are entry points for players of all skill levels.
Cricket is a sport played by all but it is a particular passion for our South Asian communities. Providing access to playing cricket is crucial as not everyone is able to attend training or matches at traditional times because of work or family commitments.
We have had great success with our street cricket programmes in Sharrow and Darnall.
Also working with Caribbean Cricket Club we have provided coaching to 450 children, many of who are from BAME communities.
This year will be another big year for the sport of cricket. And while it may still be very much winter our thoughts are well and truly on the summer.
Kamran Din, director, Darnall Education & Sports Academy
We are Darnall Education & Sports Academy (DESA). Our aim is to improve the life chances of the people of Sheffield through sports, education and developing cultural capital.
We offer sports sessions, tutoring and activities ranging from Manchester City football games to the Sheffield Lyceum to watch pantomimes. All of these are opportunities to develop cultural capital in our community to enhance young people’s life chances and expose them to experiences that many have not had the opportunity to take part in.
Our sports sessions have developed rapidly over the past eight months at the English Institute of Sport Sheffield. We offer football, multisport, cricket and female-only sessions. Children have the opportunity to take part in a range of different sporting activities to build confidence and good sportsmanship. Above all, we aim to instil respect into the hearts of the people we work with. This will then have a direct impact on how they respect themselves, their peers, parents, and the wider community.
The female-only sports sessions include Zumba and Yoga, but we will be expanding to offer badminton and boxing. These sessions were aimed toward BAME females who don’t have the opportunity to take part in sport due to a range of circumstances. Giving them a space, which is private with qualified instructors is something that is greatly needed. We have an obesity dilemma that has been expatiated by COVID. Mental health is a major problem and exercise is one of the keys to help resolve it. Our work aims to tackle this in the community.
In the future, we look forward to building a stronger and long-term relationship with Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park to offer sessions for key target groups. Our key focus is on groups that have been side-lined and have few provisions in place to allow them to take part in sport.
An example is the Slovak/Roma community. This community has suffered from integration into the locality for several reasons, communication being one and a lack of funding. DESA see sport as an opportunity to unite communities.
Our next project is to offer a session for autistic children and adults to allow them the opportunity to take part in exercise, keep fit and develop confidence. We feel that this is a key group that is not able to access sporting venues due to a lack of organisations being able to cater for them. DESA has a passion to allow all members of society to thrive. We have a passionate team who understand first-hand the issues which autistic people face and we are dedicated to breaking down the stigma in accessing sports.
We feel with the right partnership agreement between key organisations we could deliver provisions to 500 young people a week, promoting mental health, community cohesion and opportunities and pathways into competitive football through the above mentioned clubs.
At our sessions, we have brought in the local MP, councillors, fire service, police officers and local professional athletes to promote positive role models and we look forward to helping many more young people in 2022.
Hydra Creative support Sheffield Hatters, Sheffield Steelers and Sheffield FC
Keith Tarry, business development manager, Hydra Creative
Founded in Sheffield in 2009, we are an award winning full-service digital agency, well respected in the region and further afield for our specialist bespoke work.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, recurring lockdowns and frequently changing restrictions on social events have had a huge negative impact on the world of sport. As local sport does so much for the local community, getting involved with some of Sheffield’s teams to offer our support was a no-brainer for us.
Our involvement with the Sheffield Hatters Women’s Basketball team started when our managing director, Ryan Daniels, heard that the sport charity was fundraising to ensure they could compete in the Women’s British Basketball League (WBBL) for the upcoming season. Reduced exposure due to the pandemic had taken a significant toll on the charity’s ability to fundraise towards the hefty cost of entering the league. For the most successful women’s basketball team of all time this would have been a travesty.
Ryan already knew club chair, Betty Codona OBE, from his years playing basketball as a child and teenager, and so approached the club to see how we could help them gain the exposure they needed. We subsequently designed their 60th anniversary logo, which now features on their kit, as well as designing and building their new website, which is launching soon. The aim of the new website is to help the Hatters to continue to gain more exposure and help them in their aim to acquire new sponsorship opportunities to continue to support the club financially.
As well as the Hatters, we are now a kit sponsor for another favourite team – the Sheffield Steelers. Our logo is on their shorts, so keep a look out at the next game!
We came to work with Sheffield FC in a different way. We were running an SEO campaign which was based on the football transfer window that happens every January, so we thought it made sense to get a football team involved. We approached Sheffield FC to work with us on it, and now we’re one of their main sponsors!
They also launched a website last February but were struggling to gain the online visibility that they deserved. For example, they’re the World’s Oldest Football Club but if you searched for ‘world’s oldest football club’ they only reached the second page of the results on Google, so we knew that we could assist with their search engine rankings and other SEO needs.
We’ve been working with the club for over a year now – we’ve improved their SEO with 17 key words now ranking in the top search results, increased website visitors by 56 per cent, and increased page views by 42.26 per cent, all of which has helped towards securing 4,000 new memberships. This has all contributed towards Sheffield FC getting their name back to where it should be.
Working with local sports clubs has been an incredible challenge for our collaborative team – and a real adventure!
To learn more about Hydra Creative and the amazing work we do, visit: www.hydracreative.com
