This week ukactive — one of the stewards of the OpenActive initiative — launched the 2020 National Fitness Day campaign, which will feature an activity finder powered by open data.
In 2019, National Fitness Day inspired 4 million people to get more active. This year, that target has more than doubled. By mobilising the sector to provide a mix of (socially distanced and safe!) in-person and online activities, ukactive aims to inspire 10 million people to get active on 23 September 2020.
As the UK continues to face pandemic-related challenges, it’s more important than ever to find ways to bring communities together. We need to continue to inspire people to keep active to stay well, and to support the sport and physical activity sector to bounce back. To reflect this, the theme of the day is ‘Fitness Unites Us’. Supporters of the campaign include Be Military Fit with Bear Grylls, who will help kick-off activities on the day.
The National Fitness Day Activity Finder
To make it easy for people to discover the right activity for them to get involved in the campaign, ukactive are working with one of their Strategic Partners, Played, to launch an open data-powered activity finder. Any organisation that publishes information about their activities through an OpenActive-enabled system will have their activities automatically added to the finder. Many booking and management system providers from across the OpenActive community are playing an important role to make the day a success, including offering free services as part of the campaign. To find out more on how to feature your activities, view this guide.
The National Fitness Day Activity Finder is just one example of how publishing open data to the OpenActive standard generates free marketing for sport and physical activities, and makes it easier for people to get active. For more examples of digital products and services that use this data, see the OpenActive website.
Speaking about the campaign, Huw Edwards, CEO of ukactive, said:
“Physical activity has never before played such a vital role in our lives, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Physical activity forms the fabric of our society, from supporting better community cohesion to improving mental health and wellbeing, reducing loneliness and anti-social behaviour, and boosting productivity in the workplace. National Fitness Day 2020 will truly unite us in recognising the myriad benefits that being active can bring to every person and every community across the UK, regardless of age, background, race or ability.”
