It’s Inspire Day on Wednesday 16 May and with just over one month to go before the Olympic Torch arrives in York on 19 June, York is celebrating events inspired by the 2012 London Games which residents can join in to get more out of life or get more active.
The Inspire Programme is a way of ensuring that the excitement and opportunity presented by the 2012 London Games reaches out to people across the UK. In York, a number of organisations have taken up the challenge and won Inspire Marked accreditation. These events have been granted the Inspire Mark by the London 2012 Inspire programme which recognises innovative and exceptional projects that are directly inspired by the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
They are:
Today’s Youth: Tomorrows Leaders – North Yorkshire Sport
Let it Row, Let it Row – York High School
York Enterprise 2012: Ready, steady, GROW – University of York
Sporting Giants – City of York Council
Celebrating Ability Day – City of York Council
Sports Club Open Days – City of York Council
50+ Games – City of York Council
The first educational inspire project in the region, Today’s Youth: Tomorrow’s Leaders works across all ten School Sport Partnerships in North Yorkshire, aims to encourage pupils to volunteer in sport at school and in the community, and training them to organise Olympic and Paralympic Games related projects, a significant investment in the future of sports in Yorkshire.
Let it Row, Let it Row, is an initiative that’s flowed from the Independent and State Schools Partnership and gives pupils from City of York Council’s York High School the chance to try rowing, an Olympic Sport, which is taught at independent St Peter’s School in York on the river Ouse. York High students from Year 10 and 11 have been time trialled on the school rowing machines to be selected to join the project which will get them out on the river under the instruction of St Peter’s teacher Jamie McLeod who rowed for Great Britain in the 1976 and 1980 Olympic Games.
York Enterprise 2012: Ready, steady, GROW is the largest student enterprise competition involving every University in the UK and co-ordinated by the University of York. Called the National University Entrepreneur competition 2012 (NUE2012), the four winners will be announced from a shortlist – which includes two groups of York students – at York Racecourse on the day the Olympic Torch lights up York on 19 June. The competition promotes and celebrates the entrepreneurship of UK Universities and aims to identify the four best student business ideas inspired by London 2012.
City of York Council has won the Inspire Mark for four projects
o The Sporting Giants are nearly 30, four-metre high biomechanical puppets designed, made and manipulated by pupils from 23 York primary schools.
o Celebrating Ability Day is York’s third, highly successful and action-packed day giving disabled people a taste of new sports and the thrill of seeing some dynamic sports in action. The day will peak with the arrival of the Paralympic Flame at Energise, just one of five in Yorkshire.
o Sports Club Open Days will run throughout the summer months, giving people a chance to try something new, pick up a sport they’ve lost touch with or get involved running them: from refereeing to training up members. It’s a brilliant way to get people taking up more physical exercise and, with 90 per cent of sport in York being delivered by volunteers, it also invests in the future of sport in the city.
o Eng-AGE 50+ Games run for a week starting on 30 September and focus on a host of activities ranging from athletics and tennis to volleyball, whatever it takes to keep people exercising for the good of their physical and mental health and wellbeing.