Insight Angels plays key role in campaign prioritising sport for children

Insight Angels, founded in 2015, is one of the key agencies behind Play Their Way, a campaign that experts say could lead to more Team GB Olympic medals by prioritising children’s enjoyment of sports.

The initiative is working with over 2.5m coaches in the UK to build a grassroots movement aimed at increasing and improving child-first coaching.

The campaign launched after a survey by Sport England found that just 47 per cent of children regularly exercise.

Insight gathered as part of the project includes extensive Sport England research into youth activity levels and experiences.

This revealed that a child-first coaching approach is the key to helping young people develop a genuine and lifelong love for being active and staying in sport longer.   

Research also highlights how enjoyment is one of the biggest motivators for children and young people to get active, 

The multi-agency campaign, it is hoped, will help drive long-term behaviour change amongst the UK’s coaching community by providing a range of resources and starting a national conversation on how children and young people are coached in sport. 

Barbara Langer, co-founder and director of Insight Angels, said: “Insight and evaluation are central to the strategy and we’ll continue to bring in the voices of the children and coaches as a critical input to decision-making as we move forward.”

The premise of Insight Angels is that businesses can avoid taking on permanent staff by utilising its ad-hoc insight support.

Phil Smith, the executive director for partnerships at Sport England, said the campaign could lead to more sporting success.

He said: “If you give kids a good experience, more kids would play. I am also certain that if kids are not playing, they couldn’t win anything, let alone an Olympic medal. So our prime objective is to keep kids involved in physical and mental activity."