Take a look at the new South Yorkshire Sport Unlimited website - this has all the information that deliverers, local links officers, coaches and people that want to take part in Sport Unlimited activities will need.

What is Sport Unlimited?

Sport Unlimited is a National 3-year programme being delivered across England, spearheaded by Sport England but led and managed locally by County Sport Partnerships. The headline aim of the National Sport Unlimited programme is:

“to ensure up to 900,000 children and young people in the 5 to 19 age range from the ‘semi sporty’ population segment take up an additional 2 hours of term time high quality sports activities ‘through attractive provision designed to stimulate and increase take up and sustain participation”

Sport Unlimited contributes to local sport provision for children and young people and is part of the national ambition to provide five hours of high quality sport to 5-16 year olds (and three hours for 16-19 year olds).  This five hour ambition is a central posit of the National PE and School Sport Strategy for Young People (PESSYP).

Sport Unlimited typically involves the provision of 8-10 week `blocks` of activity, delivered out of school hours in school and community settings.  A range of deliverers are involved in the delivery of provision and there are a number of sport activities that young people can access.  Sport Unlimited is designed as an `introduction` to sport for young people, giving them crucial `tasters` of what participation in sport can be like.  The aim of Sport Unlimited is that young people transit into regular sport participation within the community in clubs and leisure centres and other settings.

More information about the Sport Unlimited programme nationally can be found on the Sport England web pages.

Sport Unlimited in South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire Sport, as the County Sport Partnership covering the South Yorkshire sub-region are responsible for managing the Sport Unlimited programme locally.  This management includes the power to devolve funding to support Sport Unlimited delivery.  We are currently delivering the Year 2 Sport Unlimited programme (April 2009 - March 2010).  There are a number of projects being delivered across South Yorkshire through two main routes; local projects identified and supported through the four South Yorkshire Community Sport Networks, and Innovation projects identified and supported directly by South Yorkshire Sport.  More information on these projects can be found by visiting the South Yorkshire Sport Unlimited website.

South Yorkshire Sport and our partners are currently working on planning for the Year 3 Sport Unlimited programme (April 2010 to March 2011).  In the same way as this year`s programme, there are two main routes that projects will be identified, supported and ultimately funded; local projects identified and supported through the four Community Sport Networks, and Banker projects identified and supported directly by South Yorkshire Sport.  We are currently accepting applications for Banker projects for delivery in the year 3 programme.  Click here to find out more about Banker projects and how to apply.

Listening to What Young People Want

Providing young people with activities that they are interested in, at a time and place they want to participate in them is a large part of what Sport Unlimited tries to provide.  South Yorkshire Sport recently commissioned the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University to undertake a large scale consultation project in Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield to help find out young people`s sports preferences and communications preferences.  More information about this work and the findings can be found on our Sport Unlimited Student Voice pages.

More information for Young People and Deliverers

South Yorkshire Sport have invested in a dedicated Sport Unlimited website which gives details on local projects being run across South Yorkshire, so that young people interested in participating in Sport Unlimited can see what activities are being offered and where they are taking place.  The website also includes an online toolkit for our many Sport Unlimited deliverers.  This toolkit includes free resources that can be utilised by deliverers to better help them in both engaging and retaining the young people participating through their Sport Unlimited projects.  This website can be found directly be clicking here.

Contact Us:

If you have any questions about Sport Unlimited in South Yorkshire that have not been answered through this information, please contact Helen Cund on 0114 2235672.