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The last few years’ focusing on working with sporting organisations on their social impact has led to some of the most creatively fulfilling work of my career. Both sport and arts deliver enormous economic and social benefits to society and when they riff off each other, what’s not to love?

When Kofi Anan said ‘Culture can change!’ he was referring to the ability of culture to change. It is equally true though that culture – as in the arts – has the ability to change society. Below are a few examples.

I’ve found new ways to tell stories.  I’ve done this by asking different people to tell their story and finding new ways to tell a story. As Manchester’s heritage lead on the Women’s Euros I recruited and trained a team to deliver new footballing stories. These are archived FOREVER in the archives of the National Football Museum and a selection were showcased in the 2022 Crossing the Line exhibition.

One of these was with Kerry Davis, a former England international who played 82 times for England and also played for Lazio way before Gazza and yet is too unknown and too uncelebrated. She is also the first player of dual heritage to play for England women. Her testimony about the awful (boggy) England pitch for the final for the 1984 Women’s Euros illustrates the lack of investment in women’s football. Following our collaboration she has been inducted into the national Football Museum’s Hall of Fame.

Another interviewee Angela Gallimore talked of waterlogged pitches in her 21 seasons playing – which included the 1984 and 1987 Women’s Euros.

Patricia Gregory talked about the story from a different angle – not as a player but as an administrator. Patricia was one of the founding members of the Women’s FA and worked to develop the game ‘as a hobby’ (her words used wryly- because she was unpaid- I’d describe it as ‘pro-bono’) alongside a career in broadcasting. Watch her interview here if the embedded video below doesn’t work in your browser.

Other interviewees were with the generation standing on their shoulers: the three Icelandic 11 year old girls playing on the pitch in Manchester City Centre Fan Zone was one of 50+ interviews with the general public. Their team in Iceland had recently had recently won a national competition and one had been named player of the tournament. They talked confidently about plans for their sporting futures that would not have been possibilities just ten years’ before.

This photo was one of hundreds taken by project volunteers and project partner Getty to showcase new faces in football. The National Football Museum has a target of gender parity in its staffing, collections and archives and these interviews and photos proved a non-tokenistic way to add to this. I hope the fan zone interviews will be used in future bids to bring tournaments to Manchester and the UK.

I was prevented from playing football on the school pitch because I was a girl and aged 9 years I delivered a speech at a school assembly pleading for change which successfully changed the school rules and has been displayed in the People’s History Museum. This meant that running an engagement activity at a women and girl’s football event organised by Manchester FA with 170 players in Wythenshawe was a high point of our city’s celebrations and the collaboration between the museum and the wider community. Change!

Collectively – with an anthems project, exhibitions, photos and interview project the FA project has been measured to have an enormous impact: it reached over 4.5 million people across 10 host cities including 408,594 visitors tomuseum exhibitions and has had an enormous societal impact on the popularity of women’s football and on the lives of the previously uncelebrated 227 women who played for England between 1972 and 2022. In Manchester I coordinated 7 Fan Party heritage events which were a community joy.

Switching subjects: change has happened for the better for our country’s LGBT+ community but it has been hard fought-for and it’s not over. As an ally to the LGBT+ community I recognise that we can work for change by celebrating positives and role models as well as fighting against injustice.

In 2021 I created our city’s first ever LGBT+ history bike tour for LGBT+ History Month. After doing desk research, I reached out to the Manchester LGBT+ community to ask for personal recollections and to ask for suggestions – something I repeat annually to keep the tour fresh. I’ve developed the tour by collaborating with two LGBT riding groups and a charity working with refugees and asylum seekers from the LGBT community. The tour visits sites of activism, of commemoration and celebrates key figures in the LGBT+ community. Key outcomes are increased community pride, raising of awareness and funds for a small charity and a new creative tour.

My other tours have included an Ancoats and Northern Quarter walking tour for societal innovation academics and artists and the first inception of an Irwell Sculpture trail bike tour. Watch this space for a more developed version having sought input from Bury Art Gallery.

Current collaborations are in the works – with Ramsbottom Heritage Society, one building on the Mass Observation project started in Bolton in the 1930s. It’s all about collaboration and community.

If you’d like to explore a collaboration or talk about a project for me to manage or produce, get in touch.

The impact report of the Ruby League World Cup 21 was launched last week and its comprehensive nature means it’s a lesson in the planning and measuring of outcomes and impact. Well done to the team.

The impact of sport in a community is incredible. Sport is a community superpower and an economic superpower and by choosing how we set-up a sporting tournament or how a club engages with its community we can choose who receives the social and economic benefit.

How you can use the report:

The report evidences the tournament’s role in levelling up the north, in leveraging funding, in connecting communities. It illustrates how a tournament can work on long-term societal issues through collaborations – and it gives commercially-useful data on viewership and match-attendance – plus incredibly strong lessons in inclusion. I felt quite emotional reading some of the case studies that stand alongside the data (on inclusive volunteering in particular.)

The report gave me the opportunity to learn more about the creative programme – something I hadn’t heard enough about at the time. Just like the WEUROS 22 (which had a *much* bigger creative programme) it worked through libraries and local events but the RLWC programme was focused on offering communities to develop skills through the Arts. I’m a big believer in social inclusion via the Arts and I think I’d still like to learn more about their ’deep’ rather than (solely) ‘broad’ activity here. (There shouldn’t be embarrassment about depth over breadth though I appreciate funders-demands).

As someone who is open about having suffered from depression, (what a big gang we are) I’ve long-loved the focus on mental health, or mental fitness as the tournament termed it to encourage the view that mental health, like physical health can go up and down. I’d encourage you to look at the report to see how the programme was delivered and measured.

The tournament team achieved their goal in being the biggest, best and most inclusive RLWC ever and the 108 page report is a good testament to why they believe this.

Go read it.

I was proud to work with the team in 2022 to review the communication of their social impact programme.

OMG what a tournament!!!!  And whatever the result on Sunday I’m celebrating working on one of the most worthwhile and personal projects I’ve ever been part of within a clever and committed team at the National Football Museum, a city-wide team of event planners, Local Authority enablers, football legends and an FA team spanning the country. 

As always with the work I enjoy the most it involves me being part of something bigger than me. 

The heritage project I’m project managing for Manchester is an FA initiative funded by the National Lottery Heritage and Arts Council which is designed to celebrate new voices in the women’s game – this includes now-retired women’s football players including Lionesses – and fans – as well as young players. 

I’m absolutely privileged to work on this within the National Football Museum.

So far my team have interviewed 9 ex players and about 40 fans in the Fan Zone and we’re hosting two story and memorabilia collection days at the National Football Museum this Sunday and 10 August. We’ve already hosted so many community days and events. We’ve played our part.

Football was my first sport – the one I was banned from playing at my school and working on this project has enabled me to *really* see the change that’s been made in my lifetime. Being at the opening game at Old Trafford with to my dad was awesome – but so was the ‘See it to Believe it festival’ organised by Olivia Laker at Manchester FA where 550 + girls and women were playing on fabulously-maintained pitches in Wythenshawe in South Manchester. I asked one of the under 10s how her last game went. ‘I did a Beth Mead!!!!!,’ she delighted. 

I didn’t have female role models growing up. 

So whilst the tournament continues, so does our work at the National Football Museum. We’re processing our interviews so they become part of October’s Crossing the Line exhibition Part 2 and so that the archives of the museum become more gender balanced in line with the museum’s 50-50 target. 

I’m working tirelessly – and the fact I believe my work is making a difference – and I’m working with a great team makes me feel so very, very privileged. 

I’m Sarah Galligan, founder of These Four Words and I am delighted to have been appointed to British Cycling’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group. It’s a marriage of my commitment to diversity and inclusivity and passion for cycling.

I’ve worked in corporate social responsibility for two decades. And I have a read a lot. And continue to read a lot. So I’ve learned a lot. I’ve written a lot. I’ve spoken a lot. And I will continue to advise companies that want to make changes and ensure they are representing their communities and making the most of the talent available.

In my letter of application I promised to be ‘a confident spokesperson, a supportive and diplomatic critic and a hard-working advocate to help [British Cycling] bring in the new era.

And as a woman working and playing in male dominated spheres (law, Big Four, property and construction, cycling, underwater hockey, football as a youth) I have my lived experience of being the only of my sex in a room, in a meeting, on a ride, on a team. It’s harder than men think.

Clearly by myself I myself am not a diverse panel. And whilst I am proud to have mentored BAME women, managed staff with neurodivergent needs, spent time in a wheelchair, suffered from PTSD and depression and have good friends and close family within the LGBT+ community, my lived experience is limited. I don’t represent all groups.

Equally my knowledge of the cycling world is not exhaustive.

Which is why we have a panel. I am proud to sit alongside clever, caring and passionate people and it’s been interesting looking at their biogs and seeing how our experiences differ. Importantly we have a member of British Cycling on the panel in Julie Watts, we have an ex pro racer and campaigner for trans inclusion, Philippa York (my Trek contacts are especially excited about her), sports club and community engagement professionals Nazaket Ali, Habid Vaghefian, Andy Edwards and Lloyd Grose, LGBT+ campaigner Robbie de Santos, HR and inclusion professionals and researchers Rosie Ranganathan, Louise Johnson and Aneel Javed, cycling instructors Aneela McKenna, Deena Blacking. And then there’s me.

What a team.

I’m proud to bring my marketing experience to ensure great ideas are communicated greatly and inclusively through a sport I absolutely love so British Cycling can realise its ambitions. One of my professional skills is platforming people and I have a rather good black book of diverse and clever people. I’m also looking to add to this!

I host online cycle cafes and online Zwift rides and I have an old fashioned telephone so if you’d like to talk about diversity, cycling or corporate social responsibility I’m all ears.

In 2020, Digital Urban, These Four Words and Phoboz Interactive began a collaboration using virtual reality to change how people saw the future of their communities. Our aim is to enable people to experience the potential for their streets without using vocabulary such as ‘interventions’, ‘street furniture’ or ‘Dutch-style’ bus-stop.

We worked with One Trafford (a partnership between Amey and Trafford Council) to create two virtual reality experiences for the Trafford community so that residents in Urmston, Flixton, Davyhulme East and Davyhulme West could time-travel through street as a pedestrian or on a bicycle, first witnessing the streets as they typically are today, and then with some of the changes which the community had proposed. And yes, these include Dutch-style bus-tops.

Over 100 people enjoyed the pedestrian and cycling experiences. The great graphics, life-like noises and vibrations from traffic, created in Unreal meant that these were immersive experiences and had people physically dodging in their seats to avoid close-passing cars or jarring their bodies when they walked down a particularly high kerb (as opposed to a ‘dropped-one’ – more lingo!)

We were delighted with the feedback from the Urmston Active Neighbourhood launch event. Around 600 people of all ages, from all over Trafford came, listened to speakers including Deputy Leader of Trafford Council, Councillor Catherine Hynes and Manchester’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner Chris Boardman and gave their opinions to the council. Chris Boardman talked about the need to see how streets can be – and that’s why our work was enjoyed by so many.

The scenarios were created to exacting highways standards thanks to the guidance of the project team at One Trafford and the clear narrative from our team setting the scene at the event meant people felt comfortable sitting down and buzzing once they were standing up again. The initial consultation has come to an end and the Project Team are currently working on proposals from approximately 3000 comments received from the public. We are hoping to collaborate with Amey and One Trafford on future events. Our first gave us lots to think about.

Virtual reality is not just for gamers

Digital Urban ran immersive virtual reality experiences at the RHS Flower Shows in 2018 and 2019 so we know older people enjoy virtual reality experiences. We had the same experience in Trafford. We’ve received invitations to share the experience with people in Trafford’s care homes. Again, Digital Urban has experience here too – and received positive feedback from residents and carers.

Next steps

Some learnings: our experience was enjoyed by people with hearing and visual impairments for the first time. The pre-briefing worked well as we could not give a narrative when users were immersed. We need to add a ‘The End’ graphic and we could create a BSL signed-narrative at the start of the experience for occasions when we do not have a translator.  We were surprised that it could be enjoyed by someone with a visual impairment. For this reason we will do more testing of future iterations with our contacts in Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People.

More next steps

The next iteration of our collaboration builds in non-tech with the tech which makes it even savvier. We’re measuring the impact of our engagement in building empathy and ownership and are working with councils, planners and infrastructure providers to build safer, cleaner and happier communities.

P.S.

A Dutch-style bus-stop is one which sits in front of a bike lane (or if you’re in Manchester, like the ones on Oxford Road.)

Get involved or find out more

Digital Urban uses data visualisation to create and shape better places to help towns and cities realise their ambitions. Follow its work.

Phoboz Interactive create exacting models to bring stories to life. Follow its work.