The London Swimming Youth Council

Ask these questions to swimmers in any Region: What Region do you swim in? What is the name of your Region? The response you’ll get is varied. The London Region, otherwise known as ‘London Swimming’ was not convinced that its swimmers, coaches, parents, teachers or anyone involved in the sport would know. So we took action to remedy this; the event was the Annual Conference at The City of London School on September 16^th.

 

The London Swimming Annual Conference had a twist, this year also included the first ever Youth Council where 50 young people attended ranging from 7 years of age to 23. Kelly Padden (Communications & part time Regional Development Officer) and Annabel Kehoe (Everyday Swim – Islington) ran the Youth Council. Having never done anything quite like it before it was an all round learning experience. It started with a warm-up and introductions then moving straight into finding out if they knew who London Swimming was, what we did for them, and what they thought we should be doing. With some attempts at a description we explained that London Swimming was actually there to make sure that we helped them achieve their potential, made sure their friends learnt to swim, to provide them with opportunities through ourselves, our partners and to ensure coaches, teachers, officials and volunteers were fully qualified and supported. The room was silent, shock, and more to the point they wanted more. Out came the paper and pens, split into groups…tell us what you want!? The room buzzed with ideas, scribbling and discussion. Feeding back to the group with a broad range of ideas from “People with long hair need to wear swimming hats to stop making the pool hairy”, to “Sponsorship deals”, “Make swimming fashionable so more people want to watch it on the TV and take part”, “More pool time”, “Access to training with high level athletes” and “There are too many old people in Swimming, we want younger coaches”. The ideas were in no doubt endless but we had to see if we could take this further. The group concluded that we would take their ideas and work on them before meeting with 15 of them at a later date to organise a big event to be run by them for them and the rest of the young aquatic community in London.

The key from the Youth Council was not to leave it too long to get things in motion. The London Region invited those young people expressing interest to take their ideas further to their offices along the Thames River on Wednesday 24^th October. 6 attended varying from 14 to 23 years of age. The group were very articulate, opinionated and knew exactly what they wanted to achieve and take forwards. The discussion lasted 2 hours concluding that the London Swimming Youth Council would put on a swimming event organised and run by them for other young people already in competitive swimming and to their peers at school who have not had the opportunity to take part in such an event before.

 

The event, hopefully to be held after Easter of 2008, was split into 6 sections so that they could each go away and research their items and bring it back to the group for the next meeting. These were education, venue, entertainment, program of events, sponsorship and marketing. The ideas that were thrown around the room were fantastic, the event will take a different tact than others and remove the age groups and events, and instead the events will run on a time basis. So the event of 50m freestyle will change to 50m freestyle 30-33 second category or 50m freestyle 1minute to 1minute 10 categories. This will give everyone an equal opportunity of experiencing success, whether or not they are a club swimmer or a recreational swimmer. The sponsorship and marketing will be things interesting to young people, the entertainment will be chosen with the young swimmers in mind to make the event more enjoyable and trendy. The group decided that young officials would be key to the event, so the search is on for young officials interested in taking part in this first ever swimming event organised by young people. The group also identified that not everyone understands or is informed on what you need to take part in a swimming competition, so they will be producing information leaflets to go out prior to the event to recommend suitable attire and pool etiquette during a gala.

Although there is a lot of work still to be done, it is an exciting time for youth within the London Region. The young people have found their voice and it seems are not afraid of using it! Not only have these young people taken on the challenge of organising and putting on an event, they have also given some valuable insight into how they think swimming in the capital is doing, what annoys them, what they think is going well and most importantly some ideas on solving them!

Watch this space and refer to the Youth Council page to find out about how the Youth Event progresses over the coming months.

 

If you are interested in getting involved in the event or offering your services please contact Kelly.