University of Brighton wins £164,000 to get active

The university is one of 54 universities to benefit from nearly £10m of funding to help get nearly 180,000 new students playing sport.

The University of Brighton’s sports department, Sport Brighton, will increase its recreational sports offer through its Parklife programme which has been shaped after consulting with 800 students on what would make them more physically active.

The university will offer new activities such as archery, ice and roller skating, snowsports and innovative one-off events such as glow-in-the-dark badminton and table tennis. The funding will make it easier for course groups, halls groups and societies to take part in fun sporting activities and will also enable Sport Brighton to have a staff presence at the university’s Hastings campus.

Michelle Page, Deputy Head of Sport at the university, said: “This Lottery funding means we can extend our offer and actively respond to the demands of the student population to provide new and innovative ways to get students active.

Parklife, a joint project led by Sport Brighton with Brighton Students’ Union, aims to get more people active; the funding will enable this to happen across all University of Brighton campuses. A total of 23 per cent of students took part in the Parklife programme this year and this figure now looks set to increase.”

Currently just over half of higher education students take part in sport at least once a week. Michelle said the funding will support projects to not only maintain this level of participation but to increase it by trialling new methods of getting students into sport and offering a wider variety of opportunities to keep them playing sport during their time at university. The projects will concentrate on those who do not currently play. It will also help tackle the issue of many young people giving up sport in their late teens and early twenties.

Sport England Director of Community Sport, Mike Diaper, said: “We know universities play a vital role in maintaining and growing a student’s love of sport. They can encourage them to continue playing once they’ve left school or help those less sporty discover a new sport. By investing in University of Brighton we’re helping students develop a lifelong sporting habit while they study.”

Karen Rothery, Chief Executive of British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS), said: “Universities have really risen to the challenge to increase sport participation, firstly through Active Universities, and now through the University Sport Activation Fund. We at BUCS are delighted that our work with Sport England over the past five years has resulted in such a success story, and are confident that we will continue to enhance the student experience through sport in many creative ways throughout the life of the University Sport Activation Fund delivery.”

The latest funding for university sport builds on Sport England’s highly successful three year ‘Active Universities’ programme which delivering a 2 per cent rise in the number of students playing sport regularly at the 41 university projects we invested in.