Place partners: Manchester

Overhead view of a group dance exercise class in a community centre

Place Partners is a Sport England funded programme that invests in a behaviour change approach in a place to enable sustainable change and gain valuable learnings that can be shared across the country.

From July 2018, Manchester utilised research and insight to create their initial 12-month plan, starting from April 2019; this can be viewed here.

Manchester’s place partners work is focused in two areas: East Manchester and Woodhouse Park.

It also focuses on three key population groups:

  • Children and young people aged 5-18 in out-of-school settings
  • People aged 40-60 with, or at risk of, long term conditions
  • People out of work, and people in work but at risk of becoming workless.

One example of the work in Manchester is the MatchFit project.

MatchFit has been developed from a partnership between MCFC, MCRactive and Five Oaks Family Practice with the aim to test whether the involvement and brand of a Premier League Football Club can assist in getting physically inactive people more active and improve health outcomes. 

Each participant received a free Manchester City Fantom Band as an incentive, an activity tracking device which can support motivational messaging and MCRactive provided Match Fit participants with opportunities to undertake bespoke MatchFit physical activity sessions in the local area.

There were also information sessions on health-related matters e.g. smoking cessation. Participants were also invited to attend social events, so not only improving general fitness, the programme looks to improve social interaction and provide some fun. 

To add yourself as a Manchester Moving partner or find more information about the place partner work in Manchester contact: [email protected] 

GM Moving Podcast

Episode six of the second series of the GM Moving podcast released in September 2022 looked at Manchester.

In this episode, host Eve Holt talks to Angela Martin and Stacy Partridge from Manchester Active on how the place partner work has helped build local relationships.

The full transcript of the podcast can be found here.

You can listen to the podcast here, or on Spotify or Apple podcasts