It’s been two years since Sport England launched their ten year Uniting the Movement strategy, with its ambition to transform lives and communities through sport and physical activity.

Active Lincolnshire, as one of forty three Active Partnerships across England are tasked with bringing the national strategy to life across the county working in partnership with people, places and institutions to address inequalities and the challenge of inactivity across Lincolnshire. We focus on audience led engagement, underpinning decisions with research and insight to lead, support, connect, collaborate and empower based on the needs of local communities.

In the last two years we have made significant changes to our approach in Lincolnshire, including responding to the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic placed upon our communities and the physical activity and sport sector serving them. This led to the refresh of the Let’s Move Lincolnshire strategy in early 2022. Developed through consultation with residents and stakeholders we launched in June in the Activity Zone at the Lincolnshire Show.

Let’s Move Lincolnshire is a shared commitment of organisations and people across Lincolnshire to apply a whole system approach to tackling inactivity and the inequalities behind it. Knowing we can draw on the expertise of Sport England and the Active Partnership Network makes us even stronger in bringing about the changes Lincolnshire seeks. Just a few of the things Uniting the Movement has made possible are outlined below.

The Let’s Move Lincolnshire Activity Finder, launched in January 2022, is powered by open data made possible by the Open Active programme from the Open Data Institute (ODI); we are able to bring together information on activities across the county into one easy to navigate place. Usable by individual residents, and services such as Lincolnshire’s social prescribing link workers, you can find things to do near your home, school or workplace. The wider website has advice on how to be active with health conditions, through pregnancy, and options on low and no cost activities. We welcome new activities being listed which is easy to do through the guides and pre-recorded webinars.

In April 2021, Active Lincolnshire were selected to take part in a pilot approach to identify and test effective ways to make physical activity an intrinsic part of the health system within Lincolnshire. Learning from the experiences of Active Dorset as part of our steering group which included local health and care providers, we have sought to create change at scale across all layers of the system from policy through to rethinking services, training and education and communication. We’ve shared the journey throughout capturing insights in blogs and the co-presented 7-part podcast A Tale of Two Counties.

Over the last 8 months we’ve had two large scale research commissions live. The first, released last week, explores the economic impact and future potential of Greater Lincolnshire’s sport, physical activity and leisure sector. Conducted by Lincolnshire Open Research and Innovation Centre (LORIC) it recognises the sector has a combined gross value added (GVA) of £788 million from just shy of 2500 organisations and approximately 28,000 employees. The report also highlights the future population trends across the region and focuses on what training, skills development and future provision will be needed for the physical activity and sport sector to support them.

The second research area will be completed soon and focuses on understanding the physical activity landscape across Lincolnshire for less active children and young people. It will help us to ensure that future investments and resources from the children and young people network partners is more effectively applied through collaborations to create sustainable changes and impact.