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6.1    Introduction  

6.1.1  

The Cultural Strategy highlights the importance of harnessing the community to:

i)              improve and strengthen links with Leisure services to provide leisure opportunities;

ii)             pool together and develop an appropriately skilled volunteering sector.  

6.1.2  

Community involvement has a variety of different aspects in the leisure sector:

i)     Organising Activities

       There are many leisure activities and events which are organised by volunteers: -

• Sports courses and competitions
• Flower shows
• Led walks
• Community fetes & Carnivals
• Dog Shows
• Organised school holiday play activities
• Conservation activities
• Management of sports facilities e.g. bowls and tennis sites  

ii)     Taking Part in Activities

On the face of it this seems obvious but it takes a lot of effort to try and engage the community to take part in local activities at local sites.   However promoting community activities like sports festivals in local parks and ‘Friends of’ Groups for parks and countryside sites brings the community together to be more engaged in the value of using their local leisure facilities and in supporting the Council’s commitment to sustaining the natural environment for the future.  

iii)   Ownership

There are several reasons why there is a growing need to involve the community in ownership of leisure assets:

• Environmental and ecological sustainability – helping to manage conservation areas, educating others in the importance of sustaining and enhancing these areas.
• Managing conflict of use and collective understanding of peoples’ needs – where there is great demand for the use of a park or open space by different members of the community, there is a need to engage those members of the community to negotiate how their needs can be managed effectively. 

6.2   Future Strategic Issues  

6.2.1   How to find ways of motivating more people to get involved in volunteering

Options to look at include:

i)       Developing and resourcing an effective training and support programme

ii)       Targeting groups who might be time rich or “cause” motivated

iii)       Market intrinsically rewarding benefits of being a volunteer.

iv)       Identifying local opportunities.  

6.2.2  Increase awareness of the Community’s and the Council’s collective responsibility to offer safer environments to take part in recreational activities

i)       There is an increasing expectation by the public for the Council to effectively deal with growing conflicts of use particularly in Parks and open spaces.   Whilst neither the Council nor other agencies have the resources to directly deal effectively with these issues, the role of the Council will be as much to bring the community together as to take responsibility to negotiate a resolution.   Current methods of achieving this include ‘Friends of’ Groups and Parks Watch Groups.   The nature of the involvement needs to be tailored to the nature of the local community 

ii)       Legislation is putting a heavy burden on all providers of leisure activities requiring thorough Risk Assessments, good Child Protection Policies, and appropriate insurance requirements.   This puts a heavy onus on volunteers to comply and the Council and other agencies need to provide effective support to those volunteers and their organisations.  

6.2.3  Increase the emphasis to find resources to provide a professional team  

i)      There is a need and opportunity for the Council to reach out to the community providing a key role at a local level to:

• Build capacity and community confidence to organise leisure activities
• Help access and lever resources and expertise to deliver those activities.

ii)     This can only be effectively achieved through:

• Enhancing the range of expertise in development teams to facilitate leisure opportunities.
• Developing those people skills to:
  -  Build coalitions in the community
  -  Co-ordinate activities that increase community involvement
• Develop networks at a national, regional, local and neighbourhood level to lever in both human and financial resources.   Examples of local organisations expressing interest in working in partnership to provide improved leisure opportunities in the community include Bournemouth University, J P Morgan, West Hants Lawn Tennis Club.
• Utilising fully local organisations who can provide skills training for volunteers and guidance on volunteer development e.g. the Bournemouth Voluntary Bureau.