[Video] - Relive our Webinar on Democratising Access to Public Spaces

On May 15, in partnership with SportBox, TAFISA hosted a webinar on Democratising Access to Public Spaces. The webinar welcomed over 400 people from over 100 countries and marked the launch of the Call to Action Paper, which provides the background of the current physical inactivity trends, where we want to go in the future, recommendations and best practices from leading organisations, and actionable and practical steps on how to move forward in local areas.

The webinar was moderated by Rachel Mait, TAFISA Project Impact Manager. It opened with a welcome address from TAFISA Secretary General Jean-Francois Laurent and SportBox Managing Director Leon van Dijk. TAFISA Head of Operations Gaetan Garcia set the stage with an Impulse presentation, which was followed with case studies from our guest presenters.

The panelists spoke from their personal experiences in implementing programs and initiatives in public spaces in their countries and discussed the most important partnerships and connections to establish and connections in order to bring about change. During the webinar, attendees identified the biggest barriers to implementing programs in outdoor public spaces as limited funding for initiatives, maintenance and upkeep of facilities, and limited awareness and promotion of available programs. Panelists spoke on the most important partnerships to establish and connections to foster in order to bring about change in public spaces.

Relive the Webinar through our video replay below or on YouTube.

Workshop speakers:

• Leon van Dijk | Managing Director of SportBox, leon@sportbox.de
• Steffen Strasser | Member of IAKS Executive Board, (LinkedIn)
• Germantė Bartkutė | Secretary General of the Lithuanian Sport for All Federation
• Phelim Macken | Manager of Limerick Sports Partnership, pmacken@limericksports.ie
• Miriam Seib | Program Management ReStart – Sport Moves Germany, seib@dosb.de
• Ben Jones | General Manager UKEMEA at ActiveXchange, benj@activexchange.co.uk (LinkedIn)

Useful Links:

• Presentation Slides 
• IAKS Trends Reports
• Active Cities | Limerick Sports Partnership
• Active Cities BoxUp
• Sport Ireland's Active Cities Project

The webinar ended with the audience's recommendations for developing Sport for All in public spaces. Here is a snapshot of some of the responses…

• Conduct needs analysis to find out what people want in their green spaces.
• Collaborate effectively,
• Make [initiatives] more open and inclusive and inform all citizens about their availability
• Make [initiatives] easily accessible, easy to use
• Curate programmes for grassroots and senior citizens
• Adopt user-friendly policies in initiatives and activities

TAFISA extends its gratitude to the speakers for their enlightening contributions and to all participants for their time, enthusiasm, and constructive questions.