Visualise the Future

I was reminded this week of a conversation I had with Tom Williams about how inspiring it is – and reassuring it can be – to visualise what the future looks like today.

We had the pleasure of spending half a day with Liam Bardell, co-founder of Kelham Island Table Tennis Club. Liam talked through his vision to build sport based partnerships with communities in Kenya, sharing his experience from his club in Sheffield. Liam has a space currently unoccupied for 6.5 days a week and hopes to fill it with table tennis and community sport more broadly, in and around Iten, near Eldoret.

I could see the building filling with kids, parents, teachers, coaches, local officials, health professionals – becoming a hub for community sport more widely, exchanging lessons learned with amazing organisations like the Netball Development Trust or Cricket Without Boundaries. Drawing in regional community leaders. Perhaps national leaders, with international officials also keen to see how sport can promote healthy and happy communities.

So much potential in Liam’s vision! And that feeling took me back to the conversation I had with Tom when we were walking around a park in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi a few months ago. Tom was remembering walking around other parks and open spaces, mapping out 5k walk/run courses when he worked for parkrun and imaging what it would look like years into the future with hundreds of people still participating in what would be another amazing parkrun.

Positive vision does translate into positive action, and it happens more easily when people with experience of doing amazing things come together to share their secret sauce. To be doubly sure, throw in a sprinkling of help from officials and policy makers, including people who can open doors around the world, and add in a mix of people who develop expert and academic thinking. I’m sure that the evolving ‘community sport collective’ that we are part of and borne out of the Leeds Summit, can provide Liam with some of those ingredients.

Finally, on another positive table tennis related note, Brighton Table Tennis Club and Kelham Table Tennis club are working with Brian Mutua to support his dream to become the first Kenyan table tennis player ever to represent his country at the Olympic Games. Check out the crowd funder page for further info.

(Image: park potential, Al Ain)