Earlier in the day Jeanette introduced to the stage fellow former Olympian and our chair, Chris Boardman, as well as our director of equality, diversity and inclusion, Viveen Taylor, and Manchester City council leader Bev Craig for a question and answer session.
Chris said: "Sports are now quite rightly asking questions about why there's less inclusion of culturally diverse communities and listening to the people affected.
"Sport England is perfectly placed to be able to further the role that sport can play in empowering people. There is so much work already being done to tackle inequalities by brilliant grassroots organisations already.
"I’m delighted to be joined here today by so many change makers determined to make sport available to all, to have these discussions together and see how we can bring about positive change.”
Viveen said: "In 2019 we launched the Sport for All? Report which revealed some of the barriers affecting people from culturally diverse communities. Since then, we have launched our new strategy Uniting the Movement and our work has a laser focus on tackling inequalities.
"Today we're all here to continue those conversations to find out what actions we can all commit to in order to ensure that more people in their communities will be able to engage. None of the speakers today will say they have the answers. However, there’s a willingness to accept, listen and to be accountable. We’ll ask ourselves: ‘What more can we do to eliminate exclusion and improve inclusion?’
"We have to shift the dial on long-term inequalities and make being active feel like the norm for people who for too often have not felt listened to or heard. We're here to listen and learn. Let's not just stand around the gap, let's work together to collectively close the gap."
The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, also took part in a panel discussion entitled ‘Local learning and local actions’, discussing on how solutions to issues can vary from place to place, and highlighting the importance of listening to people at a local level.
He said: "The question we’ve got to ask ourselves now is why participation is lower amongst some of our minority communities and what are we going to do to change it.
"I think part of it is that sometimes sport can be too intimidating. Sometimes it’s perception rather than reality but we’ve got to deal with that perception.
"We also need to think about marketing and messaging. The benefits to mental health on physical activity is immediate. You can lift your mood in this moment, this hour.
"I think we need to rethink our messaging and make that an appealing message that people will respond to. We’ll be working with Sport England to think about how we can engage underrepresented groups at every level."
