Our CEO’s last blog before retirement
For 12 years, Barry Horne MBE has led our team as Chief Executive Officer. Here, he reflects on his time in the role and hopes for Activity Alliance, and fairness for disabled people in sport and activity.
“May The 4th be with you” they said on my first day in 2010. And I think it was! I look back to my earlier career(s) and now realise I was just training for my role at Activity Alliance (formerly the English Federation of Disability Sport or EFDS). I was entering two completely new worlds at the same time, having never worked in “disability” or “sport”. It turned out, I was also joining an organisation which, I soon realised, was not as secure as we wanted it to be.
I had some rather big leadership roles under my belt and set about my normal (sometimes naive) questioning. What do we know about disabled people and sport? How does sport engage disabled people? (Consumers or demand side, in business terms). What is the offer for disabled people? Turns out that the old style ‘build it and they will come’ supply side obsession was failing disabled people massively.
As a result, we moved from being what could be perceived as a sports development organisation. We grew into a continuously developing strategic advisor. A highly valued resource for the sector or sectors as we soon learned.
Our website is full of resources and advice to answer many of your “What do we know about….” questions. We want to share our learning with you. We are now more likely to offer you help with inclusive communications than prescribe the way to run your have-a-go session you’ve been running on a Monday afternoon for years.
I’m proud that we translate all that we learn from our insight and disabled people’s lived experiences, into an approach which delivers genuine inclusion right across the UK. And this includes from our diverse mix of staff and board.
Most disabled people continue to tell us that they want to be active with their friends, family, or as part of their community. The Get Out Get Active (GOGA) approach reaches the least active people in the most disadvantaged communities. It evidences significant well-being benefits. It’s not specifically a programme for disabled people, but four out of ten participants have impairments or long-term health conditions. And all participants feel the benefits.
Crucially the partner organisations involved in GOGA have transformed how they work. I learned back in the 1980s that community led, genuinely inclusive approaches bring the biggest gains – for individuals and for society.
Going into 2020, for the first time, we were beginning to see significant progress against our objective to close the fairness gap. (This is measured as the gap in inactivity levels between disabled and non-disabled people). Even through the years of austerity and uncertainty, we were making good progress as a sector. And then COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Disabled people were the single biggest group hit by COVID. More deaths; greater isolation; damaged confidence; reduced opportunities; growing inequalities. The set-back to our collective mission has been massive. Our work certainly became harder, but it also became more important.
As we enter our next recession, no-one should underestimate the level of financial challenge faced by public and private activity providers – I certainly don’t.
However, there are two well-rehearsed questions. Only one of them holds the key to achieving the Sport England vision of “a nation of more equal, inclusive and connected communities. A country where people live happier, healthier and more fulfilled lives”. The question must not be: ‘who do we focus on when resources are limited?’. But rather, ‘how do we ensure that every penny we spend, is spent in a way that includes those who most need our support to get active?’.
As I head off into retirement in the camper van with my wife, Jane, I hope that partners continue to share in the joint mission for inclusion. Activity Alliance will remain a central resource for that mission.
From January, our excellent team will be led by our new Chief Executive, Adam Blaze. These may be challenging times, but even so, I am certain that our collective progress will grow at pace.
Thank you to the team, partners, and supporters, who have made this quite simply, the best job I’ve ever had.
