Place partners: Salford

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

Salford’s place partner work is focused in two key areas: Walkden North and Little Hulton and is working with children and young people (CYP) aged 5-18 in out-of-school settings.

The place partners work in Salford is supported by borough wide partners who sit on the steering group, this is made up of:

• Salford City Council (Public Health, Health Improvement, Youth Service)
• Salford Youth Alliance
• Empower You
• Salford Sports Network
• Local voluntary organisation Salford CVS.

Salford’s focus recently has been COVID recovery in relation to reengaging with a larger amount of targeted CYP and building their confidence to start using our city’s spaces again.

A key part of this has been the recent opening of ‘The Den’ in the Ellesmere Shopping Centre which houses a boxing facility, football cage and other spaces for various youth/community provision.

The true spirit of co-production with CYP and strong multi-agency working from the beginning of the plans for the venue up to the present day and beyond will ensure this is an asset for both the individuals and groups using the centre and the wider Little Hulton and Walkden community to increase physical activity levels, improve wellbeing, and provide volunteering opportunities to raise aspirations.

GM Moving Podcast

Released on Thursday 8th September 2022, Salford was the focus of episode 5 of the GM Moving podcast as series two looked at each locality's Place Partners  work.

"We've talked about retrofitting to people's homes around energy efficiency, we've talked about retrofitting people's cars potentially around emissions, but it's almost getting to the point well actually we need to almost retrofit and make some of our roads and our places more accessible."

Host Eve caught up with Salford's Local Pilot Lead Pete alongside regular guest Nicole, one of her Greater Sport colleagues from the central GM Local Pilot team.

Full transcript of the episode can be found here.

The episode can be listened to here, or found on Apple and Spotify podcast.