OpenActive is a community-led initiative for the sport and physical activity sector. We want to break down the digital barriers that stop so many people from getting active.
Research from Sport England shows one fifth of adults have been put off doing a physical activity because it was too difficult to find or book online. The OpenActive community develops data standards and tools to make it easier to do just this — find and book activities online.
With the current pandemic, the sport and physical activity sector faces challenging times. As one of the stewards of OpenActive, the Open Data Institute (ODI) wanted to support organisations to show the impact and value of specific tools developed as part of the OpenActive initiative. We wanted to support organisations that would struggle to execute the work within their own financial means, and we looked for projects that increased access to physical activities for underrepresented groups within local communities.
We put out a tender offering up to £15,000 for projects that implement OpenActive standards into customer-facing products and services. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve procured six projects as part of this tender, they are as follows:
imin
imin provides “middleware” technology to make open opportunity data easier to filter and to book from within any digital tool or service.
As part of this project, imin will work with several organisations, and the booking systems they use, to generate end-to-end bookings with open opportunity data. The project will generate insights around how to improve the customer experience, and ways to improve the Open Booking API.
Our Parks
Our Parks provides free group exercise classes in local parks across the UK, online daily workouts, 1:1 coached training sessions and a Couch to Fitness 9 week home workout programme, that targets inactive Parkers (users) across the country. Our Parks works with local communities to remove barriers and ensure that free, quality exercise is available to anyone.
During this project, Our Parks aims to make their activities more discoverable, which will help over 1,000 coaches to connect with a wide community of people that need low cost or free exercise opportunities.
Playwaze
Playwaze is a digital platform for managing and participating in sport and physical activity online and via an app.
Playwaze will connect a participant searching on Classfinder (EMD UK’s activity finder for group exercise classes) with activity provider SOSA Dance Fitness, who have made their classes findable and bookable using Playwaze to demonstrate the seamless end-to-end journey of getting more people active by making discoverable activities ‘bookable’.
Schools Plus and Playfinder (joint award)
Schools Plus, a schools letting company, and Playfinder, a search and booking platform for sports facilities, are partnering to open up the inventory of over 70 schools across England, making their facilities accessible online for the first time.
This partnership will allow members of the public to search and book school facilities, including being able to make instant reservations, through the Playfinder platform.
The Sported Foundation and Played (joint award)
During lockdown, young people have faced major disruption to their structures and routines. One in four community groups aren’t sure that participants will return to physical activities.
To help address some of these challenges, Sport for Development charity Sported has partnered with ukactive Kids and the GLA to deliver Open Doors, a programme that unlocks school facilities outside of term time to be used as ‘activity hubs’. These hubs provide safe and positive spaces for local community sport groups to engage with vulnerable young people.
Sported plan to work with online management and booking company, Played, to publish session data to the OpenActive standards so that young people are encouraged to find, book and attend sessions at their local hub.
Waist Management
Waist Management is a new not-for-profit initiative stemming from lockdown, formed by a group of regularly-active friends who identified an opportunity to open up what they do to others in the community in Chobham, Surrey. Such has been its early success, Waist Management are now looking to extend this model with more activities in more locations, targeting a broader spectrum of participants across a network of Waist Management ‘Activity Bubbles’.
Waist Management plans to harness the OpenActive standard to grow its Activity Bubbles, using the additional reach and booking capability provided by Playwaze connected with Waist Management’s OpenActive-enabled local and regional activity finders.
