West Midlands: Moving Together

Bollywood Steps event launches the Moving Together programme in 2009

The West Midlands’ Legacy Trust UK programme Moving Together aims to bring communities together from all backgrounds and locations to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games through mass participation in sport and dance.

There are two strands of the programme – Dancing for the Games and Community Games:

Dancing for the Games
Dancing for the Games aims to get as many people as possible dancing across the region. The programme is aimed at people of all ages, backgrounds, skills and abilities and builds on the rich and diverse dance infrastructure that already exists in the West Midlands.

Funded by Legacy Trust UK, Arts Council England and Advantage West Midlands, Dancing for the Games aspires to increase participation in dance, build capacity in the sector, and to raise the profile of dance in the West Midlands nationally.

To date, 26 organisations have been awarded a total of £1.9m to run a broad and diverse range of dance activities across the region up until the end of the Games in 2012. Over 17,000 people have taken part in projects and almost 90,000 people have watched performances.

Please visit www.dancingforthegames.co.uk for more information.

Community Games
Community Games uses the inspiration of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to encourage and empower local communities to organise their own events, with the emphasis on participation in both sporting and cultural activity.

Created by communities and for communities, this Legacy Trust UK funded programme is already having a real impact in the West Midlands, engaging over 150,000 people in almost 200 Community Games to-date.

The legacy of the programme for the region is huge, through increased capacity in communities to organise events, increased community cohesion, an increase in volunteering (an average of 26 volunteers are involved in every event), as well as an increase in participation in physical activity.

Please visit www.communitygames.org.uk for more information on Community Games.

To keep up to date with the latest news regarding the West Midlands Culture Programme for London 2012, please visit www.wmfor2012.com.