Sport Wales Strategy

Collective Vision: An active nation where everyone can have a lifelong enjoyment of sport.
Collective Mission: Unleash the benefits of sport for everyone.

Whether you participate, support, deliver or succeed, this is what sport means to you. In your words.

Togetherness

“I really enjoy coming to the club and making lots of new friends, it’s given me a real sense of belonging.”

Safe

“First and foremost is about ensuring that all our participants are safe physically and psychologically.  All the coaches go through training, and we support each other to make sure that we make this a place where everyone feels comfortable and confident.

Needs-led

“It’s very much a child-centred approach – we listen to the pupils, and we react upon what they want and need. They really dictate the sessions and our plans.”

Growth

“They get together with like-minded friends and start to develop their skills and think, actually, I can do this. I’ve got something that I can show, I’ve got these skills.”

Sustainable

“We’re making changes round the clubhouse to better use energy, doing our bit for the environment and saving cash, which means we can invest it elsewhere – it just helps safeguard our future a little more.”

Inclusive

“Anybody who walks through the door, be it non-disabled, disabled, young, old. It’s about bringing everybody in, and everybody being involved. We run a session and the children that attend wouldn’t normally have an opportunity to become part of a mainstream lesson. It’s tailored to their needs and really does help people to just get out and get active.”

Enjoyment

“Pupils we’ve never seen before – we didn’t think we’d ever see after school – they turn up happy, and they leave even happier.”

Everyone

“People who don’t know English can come here and just enjoy the sport. We have coaches that speak multiple languages so that we can cater to the different local communities.”

To be a pioneering organisation that enables sport in Wales to thrive - whenever, wherever, however and for life.

Sporting excellence

So often we hear that sport has improved people’s well-being, self-confidence and motivation; that sport has provided people with the skills to reach their potential and achieve their goals; that sport has bound communities together and that it has promoted Wales to the world through excellence on a global stage.

Positive impact

There is plenty of evidence to endorse the positive impact taking part in sport has on our lives – whether we are participating, supporting, delivering or succeeding – and there are inspirational people working tirelessly throughout Wales to create an active nation. That is why we are passionate about our work and the people we work with.

Constantly evolving

The world we live in is constantly evolving, and for sport to stay relevant for people in Wales we need to keep pace with the changes and adapt our approach. We can’t just keep doing the same things and expect people to keep valuing sport. We need to innovate and be bold. We need to break down real and perceived barriers, so that sport and leading an active life is an accessible choice for everyone. We need to challenge ourselves to think and behave differently.

Believe in change

At Sport Wales we believe in change, we believe in our partners, we believe in the power of sport and we are ready to shout about it. We will align our culture, reinforce our belief and motivate our greatest asset: People.

Diversity of opportunity

People’s reasons for being active and for participating in sport are not always predictable – they are as varied and complex as people’s lives. They are not static; they change over time. Diversity of opportunity is needed if we are to enable sport in Wales to thrive.

This means moving away from thinking we can be certain about the future, assuming we know how to motivate people to take part in sport and measuring success based solely on numbers.

Making an impact

Instead, we need to collect evidence to continually improve what we do and to demonstrate the impact that we are making. While there are certain patterns that can be observed and evaluated to inform our work, we need to accept that this will never be an exact science.

In recognising this, we will need to work in a very different way. We will need to take time to involve, understand and share insight to inform the development of agile and responsive opportunities that are accessible and applicable to all.

We are evolving

Our approach in the way that we work, the way that we talk and the way that we engage is evolving. We need to become comfortable with uncertainty and being able to work with clear intent, rather than absolute instructions, and we need to be guided by the following principles:

• People’s reasons for being active and motivations for participating in sport are highly varied, never entirely predictable and are likely to change over time.
• We must put people at the heart of what we do, resulting in variable and flexible opportunities to be active and participate in sport – a move away from ‘one size fits all’ programmes.
• The opportunities available need to change over time, adapting to the feedback from those who would like to be involved in them as well as those already participating.

We will:

• Learn together - Constantly exploring, testing and reviewing.
• Deliver together - Sharing outcomes, nurturing open and honest relationships, providing robust feedback, constantly improving performance.
• Celebrate together - Recognising our shared success through effective partners.

By:

• Acting with integrity - Understanding and respecting each other’s culture and values. Promoting equality and diversity.
• Adding value - Ensuring the optimum mix of support, challenge, investment, skills and expertise to achieve our shared outcomes.
• Encouraging innovation - Welcoming new ideas and approaches and supporting ambition and fresh thinking. Not being afraid to feel uncomfortable.

We fully acknowledge and value the strong and vibrant network of people and partners across Wales already creating innovative approaches to delivering sport.

In order for sport to thrive we will need to invest resources differently.

We will align our collective resources and identify opportunities to strengthen partnerships. We will work collaboratively to develop a flexible resource model. This will enable us to better meet the differing needs of partners and respond quickly to new challenges.

We will use all of our resources – investment, services and people – thoughtfully, responsibly and with maximum benefit in mind, guided by the following principles:

1. Prevention
   Incentivise positive action to encourage regular physical activity for everyone, prioritising groups who currently take part less than average, contributing to a healthy, active, more equal and successful nation.
2. Long term
   Encourage future thinking, innovation and managed risk. Balancing the short and long-term needs.
3. Integrated
   Partners evidencing the wider benefits and impact of sport.
4. Collaboration
   Encourage partnership working and joint resourcing.
5. Involvement
   Involve a range of people in the design and development of work.

Embracing the principle of integration, we have developed six statements of strategic intent with clear outcomes. These organisational outcomes, which act as our well-being objectives, demonstrate what you can expect to see as a result of our collective work.