Community sports projects and effective community empowerment: a case study in Rochdale

Abstract

How can community empowerment be most effectively achieved through the use of sport? In a case study of a bespoke voluntary sector project, an action research approach revealed insights into effective community empowerment. Although focused on a comparatively small project within a provincial UK town, the issues addressed and lessons learned can be generalised and transferred much more universally to community-based sports delivery. Detached from mainstream providers, and more agile and responsive to local needs, the project succeeded in achieving a very local degree of ownership and control. The study revealed the limitations of much mainstream provision and some of the sustainability vulnerabilities of small-scale projects, with funding dependencies in delivering broader structural change. The project challenged many of the values and approaches of its larger statutory neighbours and signified exemplary good practice. It demonstrated how to achieve sustainable community development despite its own funding being in jeopardy. And it further challenged its statutory neighbours to consider adopting its practices, investing in the project's long-term future or presiding over its eventual demise.

Sport activism and political praxis within the FC Sankt Pauli fan subculture

“…Elsewhere, Partington and Totten have described how sport can become critical praxis and utilized as a form of emancipatory action research to challenge dominant institutions. 67 For core fans it was important that their politics was not just limited to ideas but linked to action too. Participants distinguished between being politically minded and actually being politically active pointing out that the degree of activism is not consistent; I see a difference between the inner circle supporters (the die-hard supporters) and the rest of the supporters.…”

“…Sport clearly has the potential to act as part of a wider social movement, engage in resistance and enable challenges to dominant structures of power (Partington and Totten 2012, Budd 2001). 8 Maguire describes power as an 'essential feature of the networks of interdependency' and further that 'forms of interdependency are contoured by power relations'. 9 While power is an omnipresent feature of all social life, including sport, Sugden and Tomlinson establish through Giddens that power is not a zero sum game but the 'dialectic of control'.…”

Towards a new local tourism economy: Understanding sense of community, social impacts and potential enterprise opportunities in Podgrađe Bač, Vojvodina, Serbia

“…Building on the literature presented above, conceptualisations pertinent to sense of community are important to acknowledge here – since these ideas will assist the framing and interpretations in the subsequent analysis and support the development of social capital. Social capital and discussions of community refer to the binding of people in a particular location to establish a sense of empowerment through enterprise and entrepreneurship activity (Altinay et al., 2016; Partington and Totten, 2012; Waitt and Gibson, 2009; Zhao et al., 2011).…”

Design and delivery of sport for all programmes: should it be market, non-profit, or state-run?

“…Considering the various positive external effects of sports for all such as social inclusion and the creation of social capital, some research has suggested that non-profit sport clubs in particular are liable to create those effects (Coalter 2007, Skinner et al 2008, Partington and Totten 2012. Other research dealing with the impact of sport on social integration (e.g.…”