Leeds Summit on Community Sport for Development and Diplomacy

Earlier this week, over 70 amazing people met at the University of Leeds to debate the impact and potential of community sport for development and diplomacy.

As someone said to me over coffee, extraordinary is possible and the people in this room continually prove it.

My head is still spinning with ideas from two days of discussing what we mean by community sport, what makes it so impactful, what needs to happen to support those who do the extraordinary and what happens when community sport and diplomacy come together. Many of these thoughts will settle into something digestible over the coming days, helped by the reflections of those who attended (I’m loving reading these on LinkedIn).

It's already clear to me, that more collective action will lead to even more impact. The energy, passion, and ability to crack on and do remarkable things shown by those in the room has to be better understood, celebrated and supported by governments, by the private sector, by sports federations and by community leaders. I’m sure that the Leeds Summit will be the start of making that happen.

We will launch a Declaration in the coming weeks that captures some of this vision, based on the discussions in Leeds. It will be open to everyone and anyone to support either in a personal capacity or on behalf of their organisations. It will create a framework for action over the next year. ConnectSport CIC will launch the Declaration on their website in the next couple of weeks and then publish evidence of how we collectively put it into action over the year.

Thank you to everyone who could be there and special thanks to our guest speakers - in order of appearance: Debbie Cook, Tim Holtam, Ollie Hart, Dr Elizabeth Paddock, Martin Yelling (PhD), Chrissie Wellington OBE, Lee Hemmings, Ivo Gormley OBE, Alistair Brownlee MBE, Alain MUKIRANYA, Sara Begg, James Mapstone, and Jason Morgan MBE. And massive thanks to those who facilitated evening community sport events for us to experience including Leeds Hyde Park FC, GoodGym, MOVE Against Cancer Charity and Sanctuary Runners Ireland.

In the words of Chrissie Wellington OBE “we already have the power, we just need to harness it together”.