What is Life Leisure’s Vision and Mission?
Founded in 2002, Life Leisure has impacted the lives of thousands of people living in neighbourhoods across Stockport and the surrounding areas through the provision of high-quality sports and fitness programmes.
Driven by the mission to improve the quality of life for their communities, Life Leisure strives to contribute to the achievement of personal and social outcomes such as improved physical and mental health, reduced social isolation and safer and more connected neighbourhoods.
Why Did Life Leisure’s Approach Substance?
In 2018 following their use of our Views Data & Impact Management Platform as a partner in the Street Games programme, Life Leisure contacted Substance to explore how we could help them collect information on their other sport and activity-based projects. They were interested in how Views could be utilised to tell a story about the impact of the organisation as a whole.
Ross McGuigan, Senior Physical Activity Officer at Life Leisure explained how the previous approaches to monitoring and evaluation was often time-consuming and difficult to manage. He stated:
“The fact that our staff were working out in their communities and using paper registers caused delays and inconsistencies which made it difficult to analyse data and accurately report on performance.”
Once Life Leisure had invested time and resources into using the Views platform across the organisation, they were able to gather data in real time and report the impact of their work in a much more detailed and efficient way. Not only was their reporting improved, but Life Leisure were also able to reflect on and assess the standard of delivery to better serve their communities.
How Substance Helped?
Two years on from Life Leisure’s implementation of Views, the organisation now uses the platform to monitor and evaluate ten different projects. The use of Views has not only assisted with better management of day to day delivery but has enabled staff to reflect on and improve performance as well as tailor reports to funders and other key stakeholders. Crucially, the use of Views has supported the organisation’s engagement with new funding opportunities as they continue to demonstrate the wide range of outcomes their work is contributing to.
One such programme is Life Leisure’s Big Lottery Funded R Time project. Developed in partnership with Stockport Homes and Stockport Council’s Youth Offending Service, the project aims to support and inspire young people to positively improve the lives of others living within their own neighbourhoods.
To date, Life Leisure have delivered more than 1,200 weekly R Time sessions and recorded and reported on the engagement levels of all participants as well as their progress and achievements.
In total, Life Leisure have recorded data on more than 1600 people attending almost 10,000 sessions across 75 locations. An immense achievement for an organisation relatively new to using the Views platform.
To find out more about Life Leisure programmes and their social impact, please visit https://www.lifeleisure.net/sports-development-events/
What Did Life Leisure Have To Say?
“Using Views over the past year has transformed our data collection procedures, outcomes and reports for varying funders and partners. It has provided us with a secure platform that can be used at external sites as well as our Life Leisure facilities across Stockport to monitor sessions, participants, and events. We are really pleased to be using the Views platform and we appreciate the continued support and guidance from Substance to maintain our data collection and evaluation.”
(Ross McGuigan, Senior Physical Activity Officer)
