Community Programme shortlisted for National Cricket Award
26 November 2014
In the first year of entering their community programme into the national ‘Business of Cricket Awards’ (BOCAs), Gloucestershire Cricket - based at Nevil Road in Bristol, are the only non-test match ground to have been shortlisted.
“We’re so chuffed to be one of the eighteen First Class Counties to have made it into the list of five and to be ranked amongst such strong contenders is a real honour.” Head of Community Engagement, Roz Hutchings told us.
The Club’s community programme throughout the 2014 season entitled ‘Take It To The Streets’ was made up of twelve individual projects all created with the aim to help people fulfil their potential through cricket. They ranged from projects to inspire pupils at Ashley Down Federation, Brunel Field Site to adopt a healthy lifestyle inspired by sport, to the ‘Gloucester Road Traders’ project which has started to form long lasting and mutually beneficial relationships between the Club and the longest street of independent shops in the country.
Roz explains: “The idea behind community engagement is to help communities fulfil their potential through cricket so we’re not just targeting people who want to watch and/or play cricket but other members of the community where cricket brings benefits from being the only International sport played in the city.”
The twelve projects which formed ‘Take It To The Streets’ then fed into ‘East Meets…The West Country’ which was the programme specially devised to engage communities with the England v India Royal London One-Day International on August Bank Holiday.
On Thursday staff from Gloucestershire Cricket headed up to Edgbaston for the BOCAs ceremony hosted by BBC’s Mark Chapman. Sadly, Gloucestershire missed out on the Community Award this year as it went to Warwickshire – but the Club are already planning their community engagement programme for next year with the aim to more than double the number of people they engaged with in 2014 to 20,000.
