Open for (more!) business
It was remarkable to see parkrun deliver their one-millionth event over the weekend, in what must be one of the greatest achievements in the history of community sport.
Massive credit to Paul for setting the whole thing rolling, and without whom none of it would ever have happened, and well done to the hundreds of thousands of people who have walked, run, volunteered or worked, at with or for parkrun over the last 22 years. A whole load of people should be incredibly proud of their contribution to the world.
I joined parkrun when I was part of the team who started event number four, and left 17 years later (although I do still volunteer occasionally), by which time we had 2,500 events and almost 400,000 weekly participants. It was an incredible journey and we learned many valuable lessons along the way.
When Chris and I started Participate World in 2025, a large motivation for that move was the opportunity to share the knowledge, skills, and experience I’d developed over my parkrun journey with other community sport organisations across the UK and around the world. And regular readers of our Friday updates here on LinkedIn will know that over the last 18 months we’ve had the good fortune of working with a multitude of great people, fantastic organisations, and even the odd government here and there.
Rather excitingly, we’re now at the stage where we’re able to scale our work a little and broaden the impact of our community sport consultancy services. And those of you who knew me at parkrun will know how driven I am to impact as many people as possible, as positively as possible, no matter who they are and no matter where they live.
So, if you’re reading this and have a passion for developing your community sport programme, no matter how big or small, no matter when where or who, please do drop me a direct message. I’d be delighted to schedule a brief, no-nonsense conversation about how we can combine your incredible passion for making the world healthier and happier, with our experience of identifying and solving the challenges you will face in the weeks, months, and years to come.
📸 October the 6th, 2007, and the first ever Woodhouse Moor parkrun (or The Hyde Park Time Trial as it was called then). Since that day with 15 finishers and a handful of volunteers (we didn’t count them back then, which of course became one of our many lessons), over 3,000 people have volunteered 21,000 times and almost 50,000 people have crossed the finish line over 350,000 times.
