THE OSS hosted a series of six fortnightly webinars in response to the lockdown imposed across Scotland to deal with the spread of the coronavirus and it produced a host of ambitious and innovative thinking around how Scotland’s community sport landscape could be reimagined and improved as a result of the sudden four-month pause.
The aim of the webinars was to gauge the impact of the lockdown on community sport at all levels, from youth sport to sport for older people, school sport and PE, the volunteering network vital to community sport to the boom in cycling after the government permitted cycling shops to stay open to allow people to use bikes to help them cope with the challenges of social isolation and loss of physical activity. However, a key part of the series was to identify solutions to the problems lockdown has thrown up, and to share thinking from across the country, and around the world, on how learnings from this unprecedented period in our history could be used to improve the future of sport for all people.
We would like to thank all the panelists who took part from Scotland and around the world, and more than 2,000 people who attended the webinars live or downloaded and watched them on replay. We have produced reports from each of the webinars to share with government and stakeholders across Scotland. We are considering a monthly webinar series so get in touch if there are key issues you would like to see us address, and tell us the people and organisations you would like us to pose questions to.
Thought Piece from Charlie Raeburn for Reform Scotland