Why does language matter?

We spend much of our time at the Think Tank discussing language as a barrier to participation or understanding the wider sport, physical activity, recreation and movement sector. We even spend as much of our time discussing if we are even a sector! You see words and language do count.

We have struggled since our formation on what to call ourselves. We played around with plenty of names at the start of the journey with some branding ideas and some very fancy names, based on Greek words for sport or some acronyms that spelt something clever! All to no avail. Nothing quite captured the imagination so we stuck with the 'It does what it says on the tin' approach. We talk about sport policy and we are a think tank. Sport is a no nonsense sector so let's make it simple!

But we don't just talk about sport. We talk about physical activity, we are committed to people just moving and not needing to be involved in a 'sport'. We care as much about caring for creating Active Environments and 20 minute neighbourhoods. We are more interested in sports role tackling poverty, mental health, self esteem than we are about a few more people playing a specific sport. We do care about those things, but from a policy perspective we care about the barriers and polices at Westminster, Cardiff, Holyrood and Belfast that will unlock that potential.

So we are now left with a dilemma. We know it is a debate that people have about Sport England these days too. It isn't just about 'sport' We are not just about sport and our name can put people off. We do want to change but to what? We are a voluntary led mini organisation with no budget so a re-brand with costs is out of the question. So I fear for now we know we are more than sport, but we are likely to be stuck with the name, profile and tags for some time. So please bear with us. Unless of course you are a major philanthropist who wants to join our journey and can help. As this is unlikely we are going to be the Sports Think Tank for a few more years and we aill have to keep explaining we are far more than just sport!