A spark fired back in 2023 when Sport England co-developed and launched the Physical Literacy Consensus Statement with 60 academics and stakeholders. Advocates for positive movement experiences saw it as a chance for alignment in England and a means for real, systemic change. The Consensus Statement gives us a shared set of language, but we all knew it had to be backed up with action – at scale. This programme accelerates that change in a nine-month, creative learning and development programme for twelve interdisciplinary teams. The twelve teams are supported to put physical literacy philosophies into practice for the children and young people (CYP) who need them most.

Grounded in the reality of each team's idea, audience, project, initiative, or place, they are guided through a structured learning and development programme over a nine-month period. We're realistic about the time it takes to change systems and shift culture; the intention of this programme is to therefore sow the seeds for real life, long-term, transformational change. With this in mind, teams are supported to use an agile co-design approach, discovering the needs, motivations and behaviours of under-active and under-represented CYP. We weave together highly engaging gatherings, a structured programme of peer support and actionable content that can be accessed on-demand – all in support of applying learning to the team’s idea, project, initiative or place.

This programme is part accelerator, part leadership programme. We call it the Patchwork Programme because we know that it’s the combination of people, communities, circumstances, places and spaces that create our lifelong relationship with movement and physical activity. People have asked “what’s the one thing we could do to embed physical literacy in our work?” The truth is, there’s no silver bullet. We need to weave together a whole range of practices to build positive experiences. That’s why we call it the patchwork – a programme to support the weaving together of solutions small and large that support physical literacy. The programme is funded by The National Lottery and Sport England and delivered by the social innovation team at thinkpublic. 

We know that positive experiences of movement and activity at an early age are essential to creating a lifelong, positive relationship. We need to work across the boundaries of traditional sport, health, community, and public-sector settings to change the way CYP experience movement and physical activity. We need to build, test, and share best practices on how a physical literacy-informed approach can inspire change across the whole system. Our strong belief is that diverse, cross-sector, interdisciplinary teams are the way to make this change real.