‘A roaring success’ said Chris Bunting, Assistant Director at London Borough of Ealing about the Southall Local Delivery Pilot so far. Sport England have given 12 places in the UK £10m to pilot out best ways to get the nation active ahead of a national roll out and TGO gyms and activation services are at the heart of the Southall project.
Vital statistics
- Prior to the pilot, 43% of Southall’s 69,857 residents did less than 30 minutes exercise a week.
- TGO worked with Southall and residents to design 5 state-of-the-art gyms with weights, calisthenics, smart equipment and screens
- TGO’s smart data is showing the average use for each smart piece is 1500 hits / pc/ month / gym
- On top of this autonomous use, 1,500 Southall residents have been recorded attending activated sessions on the gyms per month across the five sites
- On top of this over 600 free sessions have been provided by TGO’s smart activator screens each month including movement medicine, circuits, yoga and localised content.
This case study talks about:
- Ealing’s challenge and opportunity
- Ealing’s concept of a social movement
- How TGO trained local people to become activators
- How TGO worked with residents to design the gym equipment, layout and digital screen content
- How TGO’s smart data works
- How TGO smart activator screens support the social movement
Ealing’s Challenge and Opportunity
Southall’s high BAME population has high levels of physical inactivity and high prevalence of lifestyle diseases Type 2 diabetes. Chris spotted the opportunity to get the population more active, years before the Sport England funding became available on a morning walk.
Ealing has always invested in outdoor gyms, largely with TGO. There are roughly 25 – 30 outdoor gyms already in place. Before the Sport England pilot, the council ran morning classes on one of the outdoor gyms and Chris used to walk past and see it heavily attended by a wide demographic, particularly by Asian women. ‘We already knew this was an opportunity, so we did it on our own and invested in Southall Park with TGO.
TGO worked with Southall to develop the first gym at Southall Park and initiate the training of activators through TGO’s activation services.
How we trained local people to become activators
Sport England’s eyes were opened to momentum when they visited and witnessed the TGO designed activator training taking place on the state of the art gym with 35 activators in Lets Go Southall T-shirts.
The response from the community was great and then the council then took a ‘leap of faith’ and invested in 3 more through accessing the Sport England Accelerator Fund. They spent £450K on state-of-the-art gyms with TGO.
How TGO worked with local people to design the gyms and activation
The Pilot is based on a social movement. Chris explained that residents are actively encouraged to take the leadership role in the design, provision, and location of opportunities. Understanding their needs and challenges from the start of any delivery has been key in achieving ownership of Southall’s activated spaces.
TGO trained up 48 activators, one of which was Kuldip. Kuldip is in a wheelchair. He was also involved in the design process of the gyms ensuring they were inclusive to both wheelchair users and able-bodied users.
How TGO provided digital support
Chris explained, that TGO’s activator screens are another ‘USP’ particularly as they feature local people and support the activation of the spaces as well as the activators.
TGO’s smart activator screens provide free classes on and off the gyms throughout the day.
TGO provide video support at launches and in the lead up to gym builds to film local people to feature on promo material and the screen.
TGO filmed Kuldip to feature on TGO’s smart activator screen on the Big Community Workout to ensure that there was always an alternative exercise for wheelchair users.
According to the Parks for London report ‘Creating high quality shared spaces is a key goal for Ealing. Modern state-of-the-art screens have been installed alongside new outdoor gyms to bring to life exercise routines through videos led by residents who have become outdoor gym instructors - with accompanying music.
The gyms have a variety including some of TGO’s smart pieces. They generate power but also collect hit data. Every session is recorded as a single hit. This data is sent back to the dashboard when it is scanned. The last scan date can be seen on the dashboard.
Southall Recreation Ground has had 49,973 workouts logged on four of TGO’s smart machines over ten months. (av 12493 per smart machine)
22,217 workouts have been logged on two machines at Spikes Bridge in the same period (10 month) (average of 11,108 per smart machine)
23,894 have been logged on one smart machine at southall park (23,894 per machine)
12,543 have been logged at Manor Park on one machine in 10 months (12,543 per machine)
An average of 15,009 workouts logged per machine over a ten-month period. That’s 1500 workouts a month on the machines.
If you would like to know more about these gyms and how to get one in your outdoor space contact us here.
And for more up to date information about about what is going on at Southalls outdoor gyms click here.