Promoting Sport blog

Wii with the WI

Is it possible? Can playing video games, the ultimate pass-time of the couch potato, really help with your fitness? It seems that this one can.

Gwinear Parish Womens Insitute is the latest group to take up the Nintendo Wii challenge from Cornwall Sports Partnership (CSP).

Cornwall saw an opportunity to use the console with community groups and sports clubs and devised resource cards to accompany the Wii.

‘We devised the cards to compliment the console using heart rate monitors and stability balls -  turning the Wii into something that had a structured physical benefit to the user – the kids loved it and now we are using it in the community and workplace as a way of engaging adults to get involved in "virtual sport". We hope that this will be an introduction into taking up real sports like Tennis, Golf, Athletics etc’ – said Chris Hunkin from Cornwall Sports Partnership – who leads the Wii Project. They have already had interest from WI members wanting to take up the sports that they enjoyed on the Wii.

The CSP are working with the WI by introducing taster sessions with the Wii over the coming months with a view to holding a National WI Wii Championship in the Autumn.

Gwinear lady, Liz Davis, said: ‘What fun - I can’t believe the workout you get from a computer game. Its really quite challenging but if us ladies can do it anyone can!

This project has been getting national coverage. The Sun coverage can be seen here and on the Cornwall Sports Partnership website here.

If you more details on this project or want to take part in the National Wii with WI challenge in Autumn then register your interest with Vicki Gregory at vgregory@cornwall.gov.uk or on 01872 32 33 46.

Grow and promote your sports club

In order to survive and grow in an increasingly competitive market, sports clubs must find ways of attracting new members while retaining existing ones.

Through marketing you can achieve this, while it also helps you:

• Identify opportunities for growth and long term sustainability;
• Clearly communicate and raise awareness of exactly what your club has to offer;
• Become more visible and a hub within the community;
• Increase sponsorship and engage local businesses;
• Recruit volunteers.

The new Club section in the Promoting Sport Toolkit contains a club toolkit and how to guides to assist clubs with their marketing and promotion.

Usint the Six Nations to your advantage

I have to admit - I've been a little dissapointed by the performance of the England rugby team so far. However win, lose or draw people are more likely to want to get into a sport when there's a major competition going on.

You can use Go Play Rugby to get people playing rugby in your area. Put info up on your website, newsletters, and anywhere else you run any promotion to the public. People just need to enter their postcode on www.goplayrugby.com or text their postcode to 64411 and they'll get details of their local club.

It's simple and effective. 9000 people started playing rugby again during the World Cup as a result of this campaign.

If you want to do the same for other sports then why not promote the club finder tool at www.sportengland.org/getactive which has links to the club details for dozens of sports. Not all sports have this information available on the web, so please check it out before promoting it for a specific sport.

Testing a new online design tool

I'm building an online design tool to help sports clubs and community groups produce high quality promotional materials. It will be part of the Promoting Sport toolkit, and will use photos from the photo library.

Please can you take 3 minutes to feedback on the ease of use of this tool, and ask others (especially people from local sports clubs) to do the same.

Online design tool:   www.getsportnoticed.co.uk
Username:              user
Password:              password

Click Here to take survey