Hackney’s Beacon Application
Hackney Council was awarded Beacon status for using the opportunity of hosting the 2012 Games to encourage communities to be more active.
The Council’s Beacon application was based on its Olympic and Paralympic work around four key areas: increasing physical activity; boosting jobs, training and volunteering; encouraging involvement in cultural programmes and developing community environment projects.
Within those four broad areas were ten specific categories: healthy communities, Schools at the Heart, jobs for local people, volunteering, new homes for traveller families, improving the local environment, arts in action, ‘be the best you can be’, sharing best practice and ‘putting our place on the map.’
10 project areas
1. Healthy communities
These projects focused on increasing physical activity amongst primary school children, through the Personal Best programme and older residents with the New Age Games programme. The approach was really fun and non competitive as all the participants competed against their own ‘personal best’ scores. In the first year, 579 pupils from 13 schools took part in the Personal Best scheme. In 2009, 1,007 pupils from 26 schools have taken part. This means around 3,000 combined hours of physical activity for young people.
2. Schools at the Heart
The Schools at the Heart programme seeks to make sure that local school pupils feel part of the Games. It involves the Games in the curriculum and promotes healthy lifestyles and increased involvement in sporting activity.
Find out more about Schools at the Heart
3. Jobs for local people
Using the Games as a catalyst to support residents into work and training is a key priority. ‘Get Set Hackney’ was held in March 2008. 3000 local people attended the jobs fair to sign up for local jobs and volunteering roles. ‘On Site Hackney Recruitment Centre’ gives Hackney residents one-to-one advice on training, skills and employment opportunities, relating to the Games. It covers various industries – catering, construction, retail, administration etc. In 2008/09 437 hackney residents received Employment Support, 380 people received Skills Training and 301 people secured employment (90 people on the Olympic park)
Find out more about Jobs and Training
Junior Pennant has been helped by On Site and has been working on the Olympic site.
4. Volunteering
Hackney’s volunteering programmes are particularly targeted at socially excluded groups (over-50s, 16-24 year olds, black and minority ethnic groups, lone parents, ex-offenders and long-term unemployed people). To date 98 local people have graduated from the volunteering training programme Personal Best. The programme is being delivered by a variety of community partners in specialist areas: Hackney Community College, Rising Tide, Lifeline, Age Concern, Federation of Black Housing Organisations (FBHO), Work Skills Learning, Turkish. Education Development Associations (TEDA)and City and Hackney Mind. Graduates from the programme have gone onto to find jobs, others onto further training and volunteering.
Find out more about Volunteering
5. New homes for travellers
A ground-breaking approach was used to work with families directly affected by the 2012 Games. Twenty traveller families needed to be relocated as their original site was within the Olympic Park. The families expressed a wish to move to three separate sites, still within close proximity to existing school and health services, which has been achieved. The homes have been put together from designs created in partnership with the travellers, based on existing examples which they knew worked well. One of the aims of the project has been to promote the Games as a way to bring about improvements in their homes.
6. Improving the local environment
Through the Recreation and Environment Action Programme, a £1million fund created as a result of the 2012 negotiations between the London Development Agency and Hackney Council, communities living closest to the Olympic site were empowered to design and deliver environmental improvements. The funds were provided as compensation for the temporary loss of land to the Games. 24 projects have been delivered including creating a new children’s playground, landscaping, creating community gardens and cycling schemes.
7. Arts in Action
As the host borough leading on the Cultural Olympiad, Hackney is creating new arts and cultural events inspired by 2012. CREATE is a celebration of art, culture, festivals and performances which brings together music, dance, crafts, theatre, carnivals, parades and exhibitions – celebrating the rich diversity of cultures across the host boroughs. Alongside CREATE, the Hackney Fringe Festival provides an opportunity to involve a wider range of cultural organisations in Games-related events than has been possible before.
To celebrate the launch of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, for the first time Hackney One Carnival brought together a vibrant mix of 15 carnival groups, with around 600 performers to celebrate Hackney’s role as host borough for the 2012 Games. More than 3,000 came out to watch. One of the main objectives of the Hackney One Carnival is to include communities not traditionally involved in carnivals, such as the Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Ghanaian and Turkish communities of Hackney.
Photograph: Sean Pollock
8. Be the best you can be
Be the Best You Can Be is about embedding the paralympic ethos, getting disabled and non-disabled young people engaging in sport together on an equal basis. Local Paralympic swimmer Dervis Konuralp is the borough’s first 2012 Ambassador. He competed at Beijing 2008 and trains in the London Fields Lido.
9. Putting our place on the map
Hackney is also using the Games to positively change the way others view the borough. One of the ways this is being done is through media coverage. In 2008 we achieved widespread and positive media coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic handover events as well as the launch of the Cultural Olympiad.
10. Sharing best practice
Hackney is investing in learning from other host cities and sharing our experiences. Five representatives from Hackney went to the Beijing Games to meet with potential partners and investors, against the background of 2012, to secure long-term benefits for Hackney, such as reducing worklessness, developing skills and learning in the borough. Members of Hackney Council visited a suburb of Beijing that is a counterpart of Hackney in order to learn from their experience of how the Games affected them.
Page updated: 15 Jun 2010