North Yorkshire Sport is very excited to launch a new project, North Yorkshire Together, to help communities across the county navigate the ongoing difficulties of the Coronavirus pandemic. Working alongside fellow county-wide charities Rural Arts North Yorkshire and North Yorkshire Youth, the initiative will join the organisation’s skills and audiences to create a vibrant and wide-ranging suite of both online and offline resources.
Building on the success of each organisation’s response to lockdown, the project will offer a variety of activities and resources for all ages, locations and needs. Access to arts and sports equipment, and accompanying digital resources, will be a core part of this strategic solution to promote health and wellbeing, strengthen communities and reduce loneliness.
The project will provide essential resources to the county’s most vulnerable and isolated individuals.
Combining funding from a joint bid and a bid led by North Yorkshire Sport, North Yorkshire Together is investing £40,000 into community support.
Collectively we will distribute 4,000 activity packs that contain a mix of sport and art materials and practical advice on being physically and mentally active. Further support will be available to those most in need in the form of a bursary and/or access to a tablet which will be pre-loaded with 12 months’ worth of data.
A progressive web app will also be developed which will be pre-loaded on to the tablets and also available for download elsewhere, allowing all 3 organisations to easily upload support materials for the community to access and use.
CEO of North Yorkshire Sport, David Watson said, “Our previous sports and activity packs were a great success during lockdown, so we’re excited to continue providing these through North Yorkshire Together. Making keeping active easy – whether through physical exercise, games, or activity packs – is one of the great things we can provide to those who need it most.”
“During the pandemic it’s been hard to reach the young people we usually support, as many of them had trouble accessing the internet, or were focused on adapting to online learning”, says David Sharp, CEO of North Yorkshire Youth. “This new project enables us to provide essential resources and information to our young people, so they can still get the most out of our services, whether online or in person.”
“At Rural Arts, we want to make access to arts easier and more inclusive. We’re so thrilled to be running North Yorkshire Together, connecting people across the county with activities and information to ensure we all feel as happy and healthy as possible entering what will undoubtedly be a very difficult next six months”, Director and CEO of Rural Arts Max May says. “Whether that’s though a physical activity pack or online arts workshops, Rural Arts, North Yorkshire Sport and North Yorkshire Youth are here for communities of all ages, right across the county.”
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North Yorkshire Sport
North Yorkshire Sport Ltd is a registered charity and the Active Partnership for North Yorkshire & York. We use sport & physical activity as a driver for positive change to help tackle barriers to being regularly active, such as health, deprivation, training & employment and disability in order to build stronger communities. We also run Bilton Health and Well Being Hub in Harrogate, a venue supporting a number of condition specific activities including exercise for Parkinson’s and Arthritis as well as art and youth clubs and more. Find out more at www.northyorkshiresport.co.uk
North Yorkshire Youth
North Yorkshire Youth is a registered charity and exists to ‘To help children and young people realise their full potential by enhancing and improving our range of learning and development opportunities’.
That was the vision of our founders, way back in 1941, and it’s still our aim today.
We provide opportunities for children and young people to learn and grow by:
• Supporting youth work in North Yorkshire communities
• Providing adventurous activities from Carlton Lodge Activity Centre
• Providing training opportunities for young people and those who work with them.
Find out more at www.nyy.org.uk. and www.carltonlodge.org.uk
Rural Arts North Yorkshire
Rural Arts is a registered charity that delivers inspiring and inclusive creative opportunities that enrich lives and connect communities. Working across 3,500 square miles of England's largest county, our vision is creativity in every community in North Yorkshire. We provide over 400 events and activities each year at The Courthouse, North Yorkshire's only professionally run cross-discipline arts centre, which is also home to an award-winning café, an artisan shop and rooms to hire. We programme 70 professional performances per year in rural venues and lead a range of wellbeing and employment programmes to support vulnerable people. Rural Arts was founded in 1993 and is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Find out more at www.ruralarts.org
