Spirit of 2012

January 2025 marks the beginning of our last year of operations. Spirit of 2012 will close by the end of January 2026. If you haven't taken advantage of our knowledge bank or the opportunity to work with us yet, there's still time - just! See what you can do in our latest blog. https://lnkd.in/dAZwXZkk

More on our invitation to tender for research into the link between national pride and events. Interested? Read more and apply here. https://lnkd.in/erZEPESi

We were pleased to contribute to Department for Culture, Media and Sport research into EDI and Volunteering, and to see research and projects we've funded such as British Red Cross #InspiredAction and Kim Donahue's research into Inclusive Volunteering recognised in the report. Do check out their evidence summary - and head to the Spirit of 2012 website for a wealth of examples of inspirational volunteering programmes! https://lnkd.in/eQucCBXt

Today marks one year to go until the next Winter Olympics & Paralympics begins! We can't wait to cheer on Team GB in Milan, hoping their performances can inspire the next generation to try a new sport, participate in regular exercise and become part of a community around physical activity.

We are launching a new research tender for partner to demonstrate the role that events play in strengthening national pride. Up to £40,000 available. Full details at the link below. https://lnkd.in/erZEPESi

#FridaysFromTheArchive Last week started with “Blue Monday”, the designated ‘saddest day of the year’ on which the media picks up on to take actions to improve their mood or wellbeing. For us it will always serve as a reminder of the launch of our final strategy ‘Happier People, Happier Places’. It certainly wasn’t a Blue Monday in January 2020, when we launched it at a great event at the House of Lords. The strategy was a statement of our intent to continue to take happiness seriously; investing in the legacy of events to improve how people feel about themselves, other people and their communities and setting out a roadmap for what we planned to achieve by 2026. Clearly the world shifted on its axis just after the event, and we spent much of 2020 and 2021 working out how to fulfil a participation-based, wellbeing-led strategy at a time when people couldn’t leave their homes and wellbeing was at an all-time low. However, we stuck to it and continued to make wellbeing a priority through all our grant and staff management policies and practices, as well as the intended outcomes of our grants. In the meantime, how did we do in meeting our priorities? 1.      Build the evidence base: Spirit has a wealth of reports and evaluations from projects and research in its knowledge bank about supporting wellbeing. We built on this with our Inquiry into how event create happier communities and synthesised our learning with a number of thematic reports. On average, participant wellbeing increased from 6.4 to 7.7 after being part of a Spirit funded project. 2.      Work in partnership: We have strengthened our relationships not only with our fellow funders and delivery organisations, but forged new ones with academics, researchers, local and national-level policy makers. We continue to do this now by working closely with our learning partners Belong-The Cohesion and Integration Network, Pro Bono Economics & Loughborough University 3.      Break down barriers: The access funding that we set with all our grants actively helps to break down the barriers to participation and helps ensure people from across communities can get involved in our funded projects. 4.      Champion genuine inclusion: Projects like Get Out Get Active, Viewfinder and Critical Mass have shown how inclusion can be woven into the fabric of events. Our inclusion report Making Events Work For Everyone serves as a guide for anyone looking to do the same. 5.      Influence: We have worked hard in the past few years to get our learning into the hands of people who can bring it to life, including holding events and, speaking at conferences and being a part of all-party parliamentary groups. But there’s more work to do before we close! For more on our Strategy and what we’ve done to implement it, head to the Our Purpose page of our website and stay tuned to see how we land it all in our final year. https://lnkd.in/e534d57w

A wonderful snippet of the great work that has been done over the past couple of years by Jasmine and the team as part of Amdani! Conwy. They focused on inclusion and accessibility from the outset and it's been a real asset to the programme. This was funded as one of four Spirit of 2012 'Volunteering Cities' grants - so much achieved in a short amount of time. 👏👏👏👏

Just one week left to apply to be Spirit's Creative Communications Partner for our final year. Deadline is Tuesday 4th at 9am! Full details and invitation to tender: https://lnkd.in/enytkyGT

#FridaysFromTheArchive Yesterday (January 23rd) was the two-year anniversary of the publication of our Inquiry into the Power of Events. The UK is world-class at putting on events, but we wanted to explore what more there is to do to leave a genuine, lasting impact. The Inquiry was a significant piece of work for Spirit of 2012 which sought to gather evidence on how organisers can use events to create happier, thriving and more connected communities, and has informed how we advocate for events to be used as a policy intervention since. The Inquiry was chaired by Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett with members from across the world of sport, arts, events and community. The work was conducted over the course of 18 months and included a variety of research, interviews, focus groups and an open call for evidence. At the end of the process, the Inquiry made five key recommendations to national and local government, funders and event organisers: 1.      That the long-term impact and a clear plan for “what next” must be the driver for the decision to bid or host a major event 2.      That the long-term impact of events must be underpinned by demarcated funding, accountability and governance 3.      That greater attention must be paid to who benefits from events and who is left out 4.      That more events should be designed and curated with a broad range of stakeholders to build common ground across divides 5.      That events that use volunteers should have a clear strategy to boost longer-term community volunteering We’ve spent the past two years working on further projects to make these recommendations a reality! "Creating the Golden Thread" w/ University of Warwick - Warwick Business School mapped the events ecosystem in more detail, developing the foundations of a shared measurement framework and better accountability structures, whilst Fry Creative’s scoping study set out how some of the unique challenges of knowledge transfer in the sector with a plan to fix them with a UK Events Data Observatory. We also spent some time envisaging new events - working with James Allen and Verity Postlethwaite to develop the concept for a Capital of Sport that explores how best to use events to increase wellbeing. With our Moments to Connect funding round we committed to exploring and sharing good practice about how events can bridge divides, while a series of roundtables across sports and arts and a new partnership with Loughborough University has continued our focus on making sure the benefits of events are inclusive. The Power of Events Inquiry was a significant moment for Spirit, and continues to influence our work and the changes we want to see as we move towards closure early next year. You can read about the process, download the Inquiry and feasibility reports on our website. https://lnkd.in/eCdG6TNt

#FridaysFromTheArchive This time last week the team was in Bradford talking about inclusion with partners across sport, arts and events. Unlimited CEO, Jo Verrent was one of the panel members and talked about the progress she had seen over the last 12 years, and what more there is still to do. It made us reflect on Unlimited Impact, the very first grant that Spirit of 2012 board members awarded in 2013. Unlimited Impact, delivered by Shape Arts and Artsadmin, was one of the most successful elements of the Cultural Olympiad, working with and showcasing work by disabled artists and in 2013 they secured further funding from Arts Council England and British Council for further work with established and international artists. Our funding was to expand the reach to inspire a new generation of emerging disabled artists, social activists and art enthusiasts and ultimately to promote more positive public perceptions of disabled people. They applied to work with >20 venues UK-wide to improve confidence in showcasing and supporting disabled artists, and attracting and responding to disabled audiences’ access needs (Unlimited Allies) and up to 50 young disabled people to develop and present high quality artwork, develop skills in arts marketing, and boost their confidence to develop their careers in the arts (Unlimited Ambassadors). They aimed for the work to see seen by >10,000 in person and up to 20 million people through an extensive Marketing and PR strategy.  The programme was hugely successful with work was showcased at both Southbank Festivals (2014 and 2016) and artists funded through Unlimited Impact have gone on to significant commissions. However, they did not hit the ambitious reach targets, and this tendency of projects to apply with ambitious reach numbers is one we will return to through throughout this series. As we, and they, were focussed on depth of engagement we were not concerned by this. We learnt a huge amount from them, and adapted some of our processes as a result. This was one of the first grants that tested our ambitions to be a flexible funder on delivery and measurement of outcomes, as the artists that they were working with often needed greater support and longer timeframes to be able to deliver and manage their conditions. Unlimited introduced us to the social model of disability and gave us a more challenging and activist perspective than we had before. In turn, they learnt about working with a more prescriptive funder on social outcome measures, which was sometimes uncomfortable. The question of how, and whether, we measure public perceptions of disability, and the wellbeing of the artists was challenging on both sides. We will return to Unlimited for the follow up grant later in this series, in the meantime there are lots of resources on our website showcasing what the project achieved. https://lnkd.in/ezYXK-UW