Sport development in challenging times: leverage of sport events for legacy in disadvantaged communities

ABSTRACT

This paper is focused on the legacy of 2016 BMX World SuperCross event held in Manchester. In the current social, political and economic climate, the consideration of wider impacts of major events has come under increasing scrutiny. An increasingly critical debate in a growing literature has addressed social benefits, sporting and community impacts of major events and the methods to achieve increases in sport participation. This paper considers the impacts on people, processes and practice, or “soft legacy” through the realistic evaluation of two BMX projects which were hosting. The impact of attempts to leverage social and sport development impacts in particularly challenging communities are examined, applying a Realistic Evaluation framework [Pawson, R., & Tilley, N. (1997). Realistic evaluation. London: Sage] to two programmes. Though the programme of Street BMX was successful in reaching over 500 participants and in the targeted event-based programme there were positive benefits to the participants, limited evidence of longer term impacts was found. Conclusions highlight implications for event-based sport development interventions attempting to engage hard-pressed communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft legacy
• community sport
• BMX
• major events

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the ELT Cycling Programmes Manager and staff on the projects for their co-operation and contribution to the research project. The research was conducted on behalf of the Eastlands Leisure Trust, funded with the support of Sport England. Our findings and conclusions are independent, though we have drawn upon reports submitted to ELT and by ELT to Sport England. No individuals are identified in the paper, unless with official title/role and their prior consent.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Barbara Bell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6436-2041

Notes

1 Eastlands Leisure Trust was established in 2015, as the facilities operator of the NCC and other Manchester City Council sports facilities and services.

2 More details of the 2 projects are provided in logic models. The original target was for young people Not in Education or Training [NEET] to be recruited, but this was changed to children in a Pupil Referral Unit [PRU] ie taught apart from mainstream school classes temporarily due to behavioural or educational issues.

3 The BBC filmed one of the training sessions and spoke to several participants posting the film onto the ‘Get Inspired’ website in the lead up to the April event – this was still available in 2017. Their views in the film were considered a good proxy for individual interviews as a ‘baseline’ of attitudes before the event.

4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/get-inspired/35947269 – Film by BBC of the group training (8 April 2016)

5 At the time of the research the issue of gang and related violence in South Manchester was a real and genuine concern.

6 The City of Manchester and other Local Authorities have plans for increasing open access BMX parks across the region, as seen in London after 2012, as identified by representative of Access Sports – a national charity contributing to BMX plans in Manchester, as they had in London.