PROJECT: Jelly Sports
FUNDER: London Marathon Foundation
DATES: January 2024 – December 2025
As the name suggests, Jelly Sports occupies the wobbly and exciting – yet largely unexplored – space between play and sport. This two year project will transform the space on people’s doorsteps, on their streets or estates, into hyper-local opportunities to have fun and get active for the whole family.
Between the rigid rules of sport and the free creativity of play, the space between is adaptable and full of creative promise. Whereas sport can be intimidating for some, and especially those who are least active, Jelly Sports will get children and their grown-ups living in London’s most deprived communities exercising without realising it.
Via our play streets and estates network, we will recruit 10 pilot Jelly Sport neighbourhood groups, five in each year – prioritising some of the least affluent areas of London.
A volunteer adult champion in each neighbourhood will be the key resident contact and custodian of the Jelly Sports kit, to include items such as a goal net, foam balls, chalks and rackets.
With the help of our project worker and their neighbours they will create a regular space for Jelly Sport ideas to thrive.
Each game will have a thematic or operational association to a structured sport (which could for example, be as simple as a game that centres on the passing of a foam rugby ball within a game), allowing a child-led pathway to general sport and activity.
The kit will also include a simple digital book, describing some ‘starter’ Jelly Sports that have evolved on some of London’s 130 Play Streets with the help of our staff, volunteers and local children.
Over the two years, we will develop a portfolio of Jelly Sports – filming each one in action to be shared on social media, setting up online ‘Jelly-derbies’ between groups and organising an all-London Jelly Sports finale.
CHECK BACK HERE SOON FOR THE FIRST JELLY SPORTS GAMES
