£130k funding boost for Get Active Exeter

An initiative to get more adults in Exeter active has today (1 October) received a massive financial boost.

Get Active Exeter, whose ambition is to make Exeter the most active city in the South West by 2018, has been given a £130,000 grant from Sport England.

Get Active Exeter is a multi-sports partnership led by Exeter City Council, Exeter Health and Wellbeing Board and Active Devon, set up to get more adults in Exeter involved in physical activity.

The partnership will motivate and engage new people in Exeter to take part in regular sport and physical activity. It has identified a key target group, inactive ‘busy adults’ and will seek innovative ways to help change their behaviour towards participation in some form of exercise by providing regular activity in workplace and community settings.

Cllr Keith Owen, Lead Councillor for Health and Wellbeing, said: “This is fabulous news and will go a long way in helping us achieve our target of being the most active city in the South West by 2018.

“We all know that being a bit more active on a regular basis, whether it is walking more often, or using the cycle instead of jumping in the car, can produce real health benefits for people. You don’t necessarily have to join a gym or be part of a sports club to become more active – it is about finding the opportunity to include 20 minutes or so of exercise into your daily routine. We hope ‘Get Exeter Active’ will help to inspire people to give the many work-place and community-based activities a try, and feel better for it!”

This project is one of over 40 projects to secure a share in £8.2 million of National Lottery funding from Sport England. Encouraging people to give sport a go, the fund empowers local communities to reach out to people who for one reason or another don’t exercise.

“Exeter is a vibrant place to work, study and bring up a family” said James Bogue, Get Active Exeter’s programme lead at Active Devon. “but with so much to do, time is often cited as the biggest barrier to regular exercise. So we have decided to take a new approach; we’ll be taking exercise right into the heart of the community and offering fun ways for busy mums at the school gate, time stretched employees in their workplaces and parents who are waiting on the side-lines of Exeter’s many sports pitches to get active”.

Announcing the funding, Sport England Director of Community Sport, Mike Diaper, said, “It’s great to be working with innovative projects like Get Active Exeter which offer more people the chance to get active in a way that suits them best. Given the overwhelming benefits of being active, it’s important that age, gender, or income never prevent anyone from taking part.”

Tracey Crouch, the Minister for Sport will be in London on 26th October to announce which projects have won Sport England’s Community Activation Fund grants and to celebrate being one of the 40 lucky grant recipients, Get Active Exeter will be demonstrating what can be achieved when whole communities come together to get active at Cowick Barton Playing Fields, which is staging its first ever family cycling day. More details of the Get Active Exeter programme can be found at www.activedevon.org