March 15, 2019

Active Cumbria is now an Active Partnership. The new reference to ‘Active Partnership’ replaces the term County Sport Partnership or CSP, emphasising our focus on encouraging people to lead an all-round active lifestyle in its widest sense, rather than purely concentrating on sport.

All County Sport Partnerships across the Country will now refer to themselves as an ‘Active Partnership’, reflecting the national shift in direction for the former County Sports Partnerships.

We are one of 43 Active Partnerships across the country. The nationwide network is supported by the County Sport Partnership Network who will now be called ‘Active Partnerships’. They are the improvement and innovation agency that leads, supports and represents Active Partnerships.  Their focus is on learning what works locally and driving collaboration and impact across the network.

Lee Mason, Chief Executive of Active Partnerships explains;

“We recognise that the needs of our partners and communities are changing, that levels of physical activity remain worryingly low and are affected by a complex system of influences which means no single organisation or intervention can create sustainable change at scale. 

So we need think and act differently, and over the last year we are have been changing to strengthen our approach to better tackle these issues. This has included confirming our long-term future partnership with Sport England to help deliver the national strategy, Towards an Active Nation, and a shift from programme delivery to a whole system, place based approach.

Our name change to Active Partnerships is the culmination of this work and we believe it better reflects our role and purpose. 

The term Active highlights the broad spectrum of sports and physical activities we embrace, the dynamic and agile way that we approach our work and our mission to increase levels of engagement in sport and physical activity.

The term Partnerships reinforces the collaborative nature of our work and our core purpose to create the conditions for an active nation by engaging communities, building understanding and insight, brokering cross sector partnerships and influencing policy and practice. “