In recent years I have cut down on the number of 'conferences' I attend (believe it or not!) and if I am being totally honest I was hesitant to use time in a busy week for another day of listening to panels talking to ourselves around the same subject of physical activity again!
I am always happy to admit when I am wrong and I am glad I made 24 hours available for some really interesting content and more importantly lots of wonderful conversation in and around the room (Last to leave the room as always John Byrne ) So well done to Andy Taylor and Dave Capper for leading us through the day and the AGM.
Like many in the room our highlight was listening to the calm reasoned passion of Sir Michael Marmot and his work on tackling health inequalities. I often get jaded by the slow progress and often a lack of impact for much of the work going on. But his reminder that health inequalities are not inevitable helped fire me up for the next phase of the struggle to get this raised higher up in the political agenda!
It was good to see the Sport Minister Stephanie Peacock and local West Mids Mayor Richard Parker speaking about the political priorities - which of course chimed with the work of Marmot. We need to align our work to their priorities and stop moaning about why they don't get us!
I felt the same about our wok on the devolution agenda item. Of course Hayley Lever has written far more than I ever could about how to influence - but certainly the advice to shout louder grated me!!
Well done to Simon Hayes and the team from Sport England, Lisa Dodd-Mayne When I did the review of the CSPs in 2016 it was mostly about the changes needed to morph into Active Partnerships. But it was also 25% about a culture shift in behaviour from Sport England towards APs. I think it is far better than in 2016, but as Simon acknowledged there are still too many silos, slow systems and cultural behaviours that need to change, and we are all here to make help that process.
I'm taking plenty of learnings and questions back to Active Together!! some of which I will follow up on here in due course!
