Physical Activity in Liverpool.

We began working with Liverpool City Council on their physical activity strategy with the ambitious goal of Liverpool being the most active city by 2050. Our approach involved community research and engagement to discover what are the barriers to get the people of Liverpool moving and what they needed to live healthier and better lifestyles. Having understood the context of the place we spoke with community leaders and the Council on how we could work collaboratively to provide more joined-up and impactful activities and resources for the residents of Liverpool.

The consensus was to develop and test a model to both layer and embed a physical activity strategy within a specific place in Liverpool. This approach would involve multiple Council departments, in particular the Culture and Neighbourhoods Teams, and for the work to be centred around the communities need and public health priorities according to the City Plan.

This presented an opportunity to explore how physical activity correlates to what people need, and to ensure we help the residents of Liverpool interact with the spaces around them. To test sustainable ways of embedding activity in residents lives, and succeeding on the Council’s objective linked to the ongoing Leisure Review.

We conducted a series of workshops to put into practice what it means to work and design with communities; to establish and nurture a coalition of cross-sector partners. This was through co-designing sessions with a range of participants, including community members.

By the end of the workshops, we gained a better sense of the place-based needs, the importance of relationship building and trust, especially in communities with histories of conflict and abandonment. We hope that this provides a platform for Liverpool to build the right frameworks and interventions that will help them reach their goals.