We’re very excited and happy to announce that Playing Out has won a National Pride of Sport ‘Special Recognition’ award! You can watch our official film here. Winning this award is very special, for several reasons.

Try keeping them still

Firstly, for children, physical activity starts with play. Give children a safe space to play freely with other children and they will naturally run, jump, skip, scoot, skate, cycle and play ball games….for hours. In fact, as any parent or teacher knows, you can’t keep them still! So children’s ability to play out safely where they live is vital to them being active and healthy, and it’s also where their first taste of sport can begin. (We’ll be writing much more about this in the New Year). For this to be recognised by the world of sport at such a high-profile level is very important.

Parent-power

Secondly, it’s a massive shout out to the thousands of parents around the UK who have been brave and determined enough to reclaim some public space for children where they live. Most parents feel their children are stuck inside too much, with limited things to do, and only some can and will take this action. But every time someone does, they’re helping to raise the issue further and change things for everyone.

A star-studded ceremony

Finally, it’s great for us personally to get the chance to celebrate our work and all we’ve helped to achieve over the past ten years, while our own children have also been growing up. We received our award from Olympic gold-medallists Sally Gunnell and Greg Rutherford (see above) and dedicated it to the whole Playing Out movement. All the sporting stars we met there said they grew up playing out on their streets and that it was a really important part of their childhoods – and way into sport. We will be asking them to help us bring this back for children today!

If you want to watch the awards (with many amazing and inspirational winners besides us!), the film of the evening is here – we are from 1:14.