Spirit of 2012 inquiry recommends event ‘inclusion audits’

The final report has also called for the creation of a UK City of Sport competition that would be modelled on the success of UK City of Culture, with a focus on health and wellbeing.

Spirit of 2012 was established to continue the pride and positivity that many people felt following the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Being the founding funder of Get Out Get Active (GOGA) they continue to support bringing disabled and non-disabled people into activity together. Our partnership with Spirit of 2012 has had impact across many UK areas.

They initially funded the four-year programme (2016 - 2020) and invested another £3 million for the programme to continue. With additional investment of £1 million each from Sport England and the London Marathon Charitable Trust. GOGA has supported over 40,000 disabled and non-disabled people to be active using over 3,000 different activities and interventions. Its reach and impact will continue until 2023.

The inquiry examined the power of events. It looked at how they can help build connected, happy and thriving communities.

One of the published recommendations was that ‘greater attention must be paid to who benefits from events and who is left out’. It highlighted that:

• Event organisers should explicitly set out how they will reach and remove barriers for groups of people who are traditionally less likely to participate and, where possible, how they will act on emerging attendance data to address gaps in participation.
• Event organisers should undertake inclusion audits to make sure that disabled people are able to attend, making reasonable adjustments where necessary. These audits should include a review of transport.

The findings of the charity’s two-year national inquiry into the legacy of the 2012 Games were published on Monday. The extensive report included research and insights into changing perceptions of disability.

It found that 'events have an important role to play in including and promoting inclusion for disabled people, although they are of course only a small part of a wider effort that is needed to reduce entrenched inequality'.

Polling for the inquiry matched many of the same themes that were shown by Activity Alliance’s most recent Annual Disability and Activity Survey. It found 68% of people felt that, in the UK, there was either a lot or some prejudice towards disabled people, and 67% of people felt that the public had negative stereotypes about disabled people. It also found that half of the public believed that they did not know a disabled person.

 Activity Alliance has an expert events team, which supports as well as delivers high quality events, that involve disabled people. As our team knows the lack of awareness, expertise or capacity can leave many providers without the time or knowledge to deliver true quality event experiences. They work with partners to ensure more disabled people can access accessible opportunities. To find out more click here.

The report advised ‘ensuring disabled people are part of event delivery teams, performances and event volunteering programmes increases social contact between disabled and non-disabled people, building empathy and understanding between them, and helping to reduce stereotypes and prejudice’. It added that ‘while events can be part of the solution, they can conversely perpetuate stereotypes and compound problems… event organisers must also be wary of reinforcing the othering of disabled people. The inquiry heard from disability rights campaigners about the risks of reducing the lives of disabled people, and their multifaceted identities, into inspirational narratives for non-disabled people’.

To read the full report click here.