Road Trip

Here’s an open invitation to join an online Community Sport for Development and Diplomacy event from 14:00 to 15:30 (UK time) on 21 January. We’ll create a roadmap towards: stronger collaboration between community sport organisations; better advocacy for their impact; and explore international development and diplomacy opportunities.

But before that…

This time last year Tom Williams and I went on an 800 mile road trip around the UK to visit community sport leaders, participants and venues. The picture is taken far from our home in North Yorkshire!

We were a week into Participate World and knew that in-person connections would be the cornerstone of how we would work and key to building a community of community sport practitioners. For me, having not worked in this area before, it was also the only way to understand the profound personal impact of community sport.

Sitting next to each other in a Mini for many hours also turned out to be a brilliant way to thrash out our respective views on everything from AI to the best songs of 1996. From sharing reflections on fatherhood to agreeing the values and vision that would underpin Participate World, including how Tom and I would work together.

A year later, I feel like we have continued in that spirit of people first, action over words and open honesty. There’s a blog section on our website with some evidence of that: www.participateworld.org

The Leeds Summit in September was a brilliant manifestation of much of this. We’re keen to ensure that 2026 sees more tangible impact flowing from it and for the ever expanding community of people growing out of the Summit.

Together with J Simon Rofe from the University of Leeds and Dr Jo Clarke from Leeds Beckett University, we’re hosting an informal online event at 14:00 on 21 January to discuss exactly how to achieve that.

We already have some ideas brewing that include expert support for community sport leaders, match making with communities around the world to build community sport projects, joint research, joint advocacy and joint funding pitches. But we’d love you to join too with your ideas for collaboration or simply to showcase what you are already doing to inspire others.