In October 2019 the Active Calderdale team ran a number of educational workshops with individuals from different parts of the council to explore what the value is of physical activity in their service and how physical activity can be embedded into what they do. A variety of individuals from different services such as health and social care, social prescribers, and transport and planning attended the workshops.
The purpose of the workshops were twofold; 1) to gain an understanding of how the services view utopia within their service and how physical activity can be a part of this, and 2) to act as a tool to educate the services on ways in which they can incorporate physical activity into what they do by using the influencer matrix tool.
Workshop Structure
Upon arrival, the attendees of the first workshop completed an interactive task where they completed online polls on what matters to them, what they value, and what they think an active population gives us.

We then worked through each of these ideas with tasks and questions to stimulate thinking about ways in which they could embed physical activity into what they do to help promote a more active population and reap the benefits of that within their service. We also looked at barriers (or sludge) that the services currently face which currently prevent them from embedding physical activity in their service and also what prevents individuals (the users) from engaging in physical activity in their service.
Initial Feedback
From the poll task, word clouds were created which answered a number of different questions, here are the most popular answers:
1. What matters to you?
- Family
- Health
- Environment
- Mental Health
- Love
- Sleep
- Friends
2. What do you value?
- Empowerment
- Healthy Communities
- Equality
- Inclusive Economy
- Strong Communities
3. What does an active population give us?
- Better Health
- Less Pollution
- Volunteering
- Better Mental Health
- Better Quality of Life
- Happiness
- social Interaction
Some quotes from the day

Looking at the vision for creating utopia in Calderdale, the following quotes highlight the group’s thoughts on how utopia could be created:
“It would be good to have streets designed more around pedestrians, bikes, and public transport rather than cars … we could change the hierarchy and provide legal protection for cyclists and pedestrians”
“It would be great for everyone to have access to a range of facilities, not just good sports facilities, but children’s facilities, outside activities, and countryside.”
What’s next?
The plan is for the services and Active Calderdale team to liaise together to help embed and promote physical activity within their service. It is hoped that the educational element of the workshop has helped promote thinking, and the services are encouraged to design ideas around the influencer matrix in particular and to begin to remove some barriers within their service which are either preventing them from embedding physical activity or preventing individuals using their service from doing physical activity.
If anyone would like some more information on the workshops or any of the tools that were used (particularly the influencer matrix tool) please email Alex who is our evaluation lead on a.potts@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.