London Youth Games has launched a new season of inclusive sports festivals for young disabled Londoners. The first event at Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre brought together 230 young people from 23 schools across 13 London boroughs. The scoreboard was delighted. It had finally found a statistic that did not require a penalty shootout.
London Youth Games puts the clipboard on the bench
The new season is about giving young people chances to take part in sport. That sounds refreshingly direct. Naturally, the fictional Office for Participatory Momentum has already booked a meeting to ask whether taking part can be expressed through a more ambitious phrase.
At the invented Festival Logistics Desk, coordinator Priya Participation welcomed the opening event. “We wanted sport to feel welcoming,” she said. “Then the clipboard arrived with a table asking whether welcome had met its quarterly indicators.” The clipboard remained calm. It had been trained for pressure.
London Youth Games said nearly a third of disabled children are missing out on the benefits of being active, citing Sport England. That makes access more than a slogan on a pull up banner. It means events have to work for the people who want to join in, rather than asking everyone to adapt to the banner.
The 230 young people came from 23 schools across 13 boroughs. This gave the organisers a pleasing number of groups, venues and travel plans to coordinate. It also gave one imaginary scheduling officer the chance to describe a hockey hall as a “cross borough joy delivery environment” until the badminton shuttlecock asked for a simpler name.
The festival learns to count the right thing
Inclusive sport can produce an impressive pile of paperwork. There are registrations, accessibility plans, session schedules and the inevitable spreadsheet that believes every human feeling should fit into a column. Yet the point of the day remains stubbornly physical. People arrive, play and take their place in the room.
The fictional clipboard has offered a final evaluation. It says the festival passed, provided somebody stops measuring the applause before it starts.
Source: London Youth Games.
