Bid to get students playing more sport
Sport England's themed rounds of National Lottery funding tackle gaps in sporting participation, to complement other funding programmes.
24th March 2010
Sport England has announced a £10 million National Lottery funding round, Active Universities, aimed at increasing the number of university students playing sport regularly by 100,000.
With just under three in 10 university students currently playing sport at least three times a week, Active Universities is a drive to create accessible sporting opportunities for the 72% who say they would like to do more sport. It is the third of our competitive themed rounds aimed at addressing challenges to grassroots sport and opportunities to increase participation.
"We know that young adults who are playing sport regularly by the time they leave university are likely to stick with it for the rest of their lives", said Jennie Price. "That's why this themed round will really boost our drive to change the nation's sporting behaviours, and why I'm urging people to come forward with innovative ideas to increase student participation.
"There's already a strong tradition of competitive sport within universities, but this is a big opportunity to increase participation through more informal and social formats."
We'd like to see universities engaging with a range of partners in developing innovative bids that will tackle the barriers to student participation such as:
- An insufficient number of coaches, volunteers and co-ordinators to increase and sustain student participation
- Over-structured and inflexible sporting provision within universities which doesn't cater for all students, particularly those who don't want to compete for their university
- A failure to replicate the sporting opportunities that young people had previously enjoyed at sports clubs in their local community
- Capacity issues at universities that don't have sports facilities on their sites and haven't yet formed partnerships with other providers. Research shows that nine out of 10 university sports halls are at capacity during term time.
Find out all about the Active Universities fund, its aims and the criteria for applications..
Applications open 29 March 2010 close 23 June 2010
Sport England are holding four pre-application workshops
- 7 April Bristol
- 9 April London
- 15 April Birmingham
- 19 April Manchester
If you wish to apply to the Active Universities themed round, you must ensure that your project:
- Is strongly focused on sport for higher education students enrolled at a university
- Directly addresses our objectives for this round
Is for £10,001 or over. - If your project is not appropriate to this theme it may be better suited for a subsequent theme or one of our other funding programmes, such as the Small Grants Fund. You can apply for any sum from £300 to £10,000 but the total project cost cannot exceed £50,000. It is open to any bona fide not-for-profit club or association, statutory body or educational establishment.
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