Games Legacy

March 11th, 2011: On your marks…; mfarrell; Comments: none

Next week marks a couple of significant milestones towards the London 2012 Olympics and the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Monday 14^th March is Commonwealth Day, an annual celebration of the Commonwealth. To mark this occasion many local authorities and organisations are taking part in ‘Sport your trainers’ day to show support for Glasgow 2014. Why not join in on Monday? Find out more here:

http://ltsblogs.org.uk/gameslegacy/2011/03/02/sport-your-trainers-for-commonwealth-day/

The theme of this year’s Commonwealth Day is ‘Women as agents of change’.

Tuesday 15^th March marks 500 days until the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. One of the first events will be women’s football at Hampden.

How can we make the most of this unique opportunity to leave a lasting legacy in education? Are you aware of all the opportunities, resources, ideas and initiatives out there? Here is a list of just some of what is on offer – and there really is something for everyone!

1. Get Set – the London 2012 education programme: register with Get Set and get access to a huge range of excellent resources, opportunities and activities. Join the Get Set Network, the official reward and recognition scheme to get access to even more. There is something for all age groups from 3-18 across all curriculum areas. Each month you will receive a newsletter highlighting featured resources and opportunities such as Get Enterprising, the Get Ahead school leavers programme, Film Nation: Shorts and Two birds with one stone – a competition where you nominate one of your students who is living the Olympic and Paralympic values and receive a surprise visit from one of the 2012 mascots. Just released is Get Set to exercise your taste buds a competition to encourage healthy lifestyles. The prize is to have your meal ideas served up in the Athletes’ Village!

2. Inspire - Inspire projects are a way for non-commercial organisations to get involved in building the legacy of London 2012. Many schools are already involved in Inspire projects and can use this involvement to get onto the Get Set Network.

3. Learning for Life – Inspire/Aspire - many schools have participated for several years in the Learning for Life values poster competition. This year, the competition is an Inspire project and uses the Olympic and Paralympic values as the theme.

4. Human Race - this is an exciting 3 year project and another Inspire project exploring Scotland’s global impact on the history, culture and science of sport. And right now there is the opportunity to take part in a competition to design a sports related product to feature in a major new exhibition in 2012 during the London 2012 Olympic Games

5. Sky Sports – Living for Sport: this free initiative offers a mentor for the day to work with a group of young people who have been organising an event. And it is not just any old mentor in Scotland but a gold medal winning gymnast, Steve Frew.

6. Bank of Scotland National School Sports Week – have you registered your school sports event as part of this national event? Here is a chance to connect what you are doing to London 2012 and inspire learners to get involved.

7. Lead 2014 – are you signed up yet? Lead 2014 invites every secondary school in Scotland to send a selection of young people to take part in one of six free conferences in universities across the country. Targeted at young people aged 14+ and taking place during March and April, the day-long conferences will see university students lead workshops on event management to inspire the younger students to subsequently organise and deliver Commonwealth Games themed sports festivals within their own school community. Parallel workshops will also be run for teachers highlighting the ways in which they can support teams comprised of young leaders.

8. the Jubilee Time Capsule - 2012 marks the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – that’s 60 years also as Head of the Commonwealth. The Royal Commonwealth Society want to build a unique time capsule of this time and they want to hear your stories. Pick a day from the last 60 years and tell us what happened in your family, community or country. You could interview someone, write a poem, do a drawing, take a photograph or make a film. There are 21,915 days in the last 60 years (from 6th February 1952 until 5th February 2012) and they need stories for each of them!

For more information on these and other initiatives, go to the Games Legacy area on LTS online.

Categories Commonwealth, Commonwealth Games, Get Set, health and well being, International, olympics, Uncategorized