Tactic Connect were delighted to attend the Professional Players Federation Inclusion in Sport Day, 4th July 2024 at the Oval. It was an insightful day, attended by people from a range of players associations and sport organisations, across a multitude of sports, creating a diverse environment in which to discuss questions of inclusion and inclusive practices within our sports.
The day opened with a panel chaired by Viveen Taylor (Sport England) and delivered by Lindsay Gordon (League Managers Association), Jatin Patel (Rugby Football Union)and Abi Sakande (Professional Cricketers Association) who discussed the importance of inclusivity within sporting leadership and implementing inclusive practices into sporting organisations. All four of the panellists spoke to the importance of sports organisations knowing their starting point when pursuing inclusivity and that a culture of diversity, equality and inclusion takes time, and effort from everyone within the organisation. The panel highlighted that for sport to be diverse organisations must start with participation and inclusion of athletes at every level of the sport, building a culture of inclusion from within a sport to allow space for diversity. This panel raised some fascinating questions about how sporting governing bodies execute equality, diversity, and inclusion policies and how, in order for these policies to be successful there has to be an ethos of collaboration and commitment between everyone, at every level of a sporting organisation and a desire to strive continuously towards a sporting culture that champions inclusion for everyone.
The workshop and keynote presentation of the day were delivered by Caragh McMurty (Olymian) and Mikey Mottram (former GB rower) from Neurodiverse Sport who spoke about the practical ways in which sport can become neuro-inclusive and the difficulties that are currently facing neurodivergent athletes. They used their own experiences within sports as neurodivergent athletes to set the backdrop to the importance of developing a collective understanding surrounding neurodiversity and the impact neurodiversity can have on an individual athlete. Caragh and Mikey explained how important it is for people to understand the traits of neurodiversity and the wide variation of these traits for sport to benefit from people, both athletes and other sporting personnel, that are neurodiverse, in an environment where neurodiversity is far more prevalent in sport than we might initially think.
In our groups for the workshop, we had a convivial session discussing the practical adaptations that sporting environments need to consider and the structure that can make create environments in which neurodiversity is celebrated, emphasising the neurodiversity paradigm rather than the medical model of disability to create a space where neurodiversity is celebrated and not viewed as a hindrance, the way pre-existing stereotypes surrounding neurodiversity often do. This session highlighted an area of inclusion within sport that is often less discussed, but equally important, and raised some key areas within sport and its organisations where adaptations in procedure can be made to allow organisations to benefit from and embrace neurodiversity rather than exclude.
The final panel of the afternoon was chaired by Jason Lee (former footballer), and was delivered by Ashton Hewitt (rugby union player), Jade Popoola (netballer) and Donna Fraser OBE (Professional Cricketers Association and Olympian). While these speakers are all athletes from different sports they spoke about their shared experiences of racial discrimination within their respective sports. They discussed the need for sports governing bodies and corporations to go beyond surface-level tokenistic acts of anti-racism and actually, actively dissect what their organisation and sport are doing to dismantle racism within their organisations and wider sport. In the panel’s opinion this works towards organisations removing the disingenuous, often short-lived pledges of anti-racism that became prevalent during the 2020 Black Lives Matter Movement. The panel highlighted that organisations need to be careful not to become part of this moral panic and instead of implementing short-lived solutions to subdue this panic, they should take time to implement solutions that create a long-term positive impact and that organisations should be vocal about the changes they implement as they strive for racial equality. However, while the panel spoke about the impact of solutions in the face of moral panic, they highlighted that it should not take a moment of crisis for an organisation to address what they are doing to actively combat racism within their sports.
Tactic Connect would like to thank Brendon Batson, Simon Taylor and all at the PPF for organising and presenting this event and to thank everyone who spoke; everyone’s firsthand experiences within the sporting world provided truly unique insight into the issues that still face sport today. However, the day also provided practical and implementable solutions for the areas in which sporting bodies still need to strive to produce a positive change when it comes to diversity, equality and inclusion within a sporting culture. We have come away from the event with knowledge, better understanding and the start of a toolkit which will, no doubt benefit the work we do with our clients.
Comments