Agenda item

Report of Corporate Director of Commercial and Operations

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Sport and Culture, and received a joint presentation by Councillor Trimble, Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture, Eddie Curry, Head of Parks and Open Spaces, and Alex Brown, Community Sport and Physical Activity Officer, regarding the 2015 ParkLives programme, including how communities can get involved in the provision of, and participate in, a range of free to attend activities, sports and events delivered in local parks around the City throughout 2016 and beyond.

The main points were as follows:

·  ParkLives is a project funded by Coca Cola GB, aimed at getting 1 million people ‘active’ by 2020;

·  the 2016 programme of weekly healthy lifestyle, sports, activities and events in local parks across the City will have a key emphasis around activating the entire community, and training and developing a local network of people who can get involved and help sustain the programme in future years;

·  for the 2016 programme, the ParkLives Team is looking to identify and recruit local people to the following posts as volunteers to help promote and run the sessions:

·  ParkLives Ambassadors - will help promote the ParkLives sessions and be a local champion who can encourage local groups and individuals to get involved and be active in their local parks;

·  ParkLives Activators - will actively get involved in assisting / leading local ParkLives sessions. This could be as a walk leader, organising a weekly game of rounder’s or running a weekly Zumba class in the parks and/or community centres;

·  as part of the programme, the ParkLives Team will help provide support and training on all aspects relating to the programme and show volunteers how to promote and deliver the sessions; 

·  the Programme will focus on delivering 3 areas of activity across the City:

·  Major ParkLives events and one-off activity days, such as Southglade Live, Cycle Live, Clifton Picnic in the Park, Radford Family fun day, Radford curry in the park, Vernon Park family fun day and Father’s Day (19 June);

·  family activity weeks during the Easter holiday (2 - 17 April), May half-term holiday (30 May - 5 June), Love Parks week (15 - 24 July) and October half-term holiday (17 - 28 October);

·  continuous blocks of activity (a set timetable where activities will be taking place at the same time of day, in the same park each week for the duration of the block) during 6 June - 22 July (7 weeks spring-summer), 27 July - 31 August (5 week family focussed summer holidays) and 5 September - 14 October (6 week autumn block).

During discussion, the following comments were made:

·  it is important that local people get involved and use their local parks, therefore communicating the events etc needs to be done as widely as possible, not just relying on social media / electronic communication, as the project covers all age groups, some of which won’t use the internet.

RESOLVED

(1)  to note the 2016 ParkLives Programme of activities and events as detailed above, and that the ParkLives Team can be contacted at parklives@nottinghamcity.gov.uk;

(2)  that local representatives forward to the Head of Parks and Open Spaces nominations for ParkLives ambassadors and activators.