Helping individuals and society to flourish

Embracing sports, physical activity, arts and culture, volunteering and social action, these projects have benefitted more than 2.8 million people up and down the UK since 2013. In Scotland, for example, girls and young women were inspired to take up netball and empowered to make healthy life decisions through Netball Scotland’s six-week Sirens programme, which launched in April 2017.

Another sporting project is Breaking Boundaries. Running from 2018 to 2021, this GBP 1.8m initiative has been rolled out in five English cities and brings disabled and non-disabled young people from different backgrounds, their families and communities together through regular involvement in cricket.

Launched in schools and communities in England in June 2019, the Travel to Tokyo programme has now been extended to the four countries that make up the United Kingdom. Inspired by the UK’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes, tens of thousands of children and families have become active together. In taking part in activities, they go on a collective, virtual journey to Tokyo, the host city of the 2020 Olympic Games.

Arts projects include Viewfinder Plus. This three-year programme engages its 40 members in 48 film skills workshops. It gives filmmakers with learning disabilities, autism and additional needs increased independence in exploring their creative skills and using them in their local communities. In the English Midlands, meanwhile, the city of Coventry is rolling out a community programme of cultural activities addressing the city’s biggest social issues, and nearby Birmingham is running arts initiatives for disabled and non-disabled people. These will end with participants giving performances as part of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme.

All these projects and many more besides are funded by Spirit of 2012, which was founded in 2013 by the UK’s National Lottery Community Fund. Spirit of 2012 recognises both the transformational effect that the Olympic Games can have – especially on young and disabled people – and the spirit of pride, positivity and social connectedness that the event generates. Abiding by its five key principles of inclusive, engaging, sustainable, local and reflective, the Trust has invested over GBP 30 million in its projects across the UK. In the process, it has trained, supported and deployed over 40,000 volunteers and directly engaged with nearly three million people.

As well as providing project funding, Spirit of 2012 commissions research into the best ways for events to achieve a long-term social impact. Published in 2020, Spirit’s Moment to Movement report and theory of change analyse the way in which ‘moments’ (community events) result in ‘movements’ (longer-term social action that links back to the ‘spirit’ of the original event). Supported by an online learning module, the document is designed to help funding organisations ensure the events they support deliver maximum social impact, remove barriers to participation, and create lasting social legacies that extend far beyond immediate objectives.