UK Sport

• You are here:
• Media Centre
• News

Event Organisers Programme Launched by UK Sport

Subscribe

Mairi Irvine 26 February 2007

UK Sport is launching a new development programme for event organisers this week, to ensure that best practice event management skills are shared amongst Britain’s sporting event organisers.

The Event Organisers Development initiative will provide a professional development programme and networking forum for key event personnel in national governing bodies across a range of sports.

Developed by UK Sport’s World Class Events team, the programme opens with a workshop alongside the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Birmingham on Thursday and Friday. Over the two days, delegates will attend seminars including business planning and financial management and sponsorship acquisition. Crucially, they will also benefit from hands-on experience of witnessing a World Class event in full operational mode, including observing the accreditation centre, press area and doping control.

Martin Morton, UK Sport’s Senior Events Consultant, explains the rationale behind the initiative:

“As well as co-ordinating the UK’s efforts to bid and stage World Class sporting events on home soil, we also have a responsibility to provide specialist technical support and expertise to local organising committees. In addition, London 2012 has resulted in a doubling of our financial resources for investing in events, thus increasing the number of sports and event organisers we will be working with over the coming years.

“As a result of this, we have been exploring options to provide a new tailored and carefully targeted professional development programme with the overall aim of capturing, harnessing and transferring event-staging knowledge between sports for the greater benefit of all those involved.

“The aims of the programme are two-fold; to develop and enhance the necessary skills within the UK to stage world-class events, and to encourage a network of knowledge-sharing across NGBs. As the programme develops we intend to use a variety of initiatives including workshops, observer programmes and the development of a toolkit of resources.”

UK Sport’s World Class Events Programme (WCEP) will invest up to £20 million of National Lottery funds in events in the run-up to 2012. This year, the programme will support up to 17 events, with the largest award of 2007 of up to £750,000 being invested in the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Birmingham this weekend. 

Back to news listing

Most Viewed