Becoming the Hub

Becoming the Hub was a project funded by the European Union. Its Executive Summary Report - the findings and evidence the project had gathered - was released by EHFA at the London Summit on 22 November 2010, at a conference convened for the occasion.

The summit ran over 22 and 23 November 2010. Over 70 delegates from across Europe and around the world attended the specially convened conference, which was addressed by Jacob Kornbeck of the Sport Unit at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Education and Culture, and by Prof. Dr Harold (Bill) Kohl III, President of the International Society of Physical Activity and Health. The association announced the summit in advance and reported afterwards on the Commission's part in it; both are in the news archive, at EHFA London Summit 22 and 23 November 2010 and EU Commission at the EHFA London Summit.

The Executive Summary Report presented the project's findings and its evidence, and its recommendations were discussed and agreed by the delegates, who then signed a public pledge. The pledge committed the health and fitness sector to building a framework of action for mass participation in exercise and activity, based on professional collaboration and coordination with other agencies, and to integrated policies, campaigns and recommendations of best practice directed at the EU Guidelines on Physical Activity. EHFA released the report and the pledge on the same day; the news item records the announcement, and the pledge itself is recorded on the Pledge by Fitness Sector page.

The release fell on the first of the summit's two days, and EHFA made the Executive Summary available as a report to download alongside the announcement.

The work did not finish at the summit. The project's final report and recommendations were to be submitted to the European Commission in February 2011.

The name states the ambition. Physical activity policy in Europe is written for whole populations, and the guidelines tell citizens how much activity they need; what policy cannot do by itself is put anyone in a position to act on it. The sector's case was that its facilities are already open to people who will never join a sports club, a team or a national federation, and that the staff in them are in regular contact with exactly the people whose inactivity public health policy is most concerned about. On that argument, the fitness sector is not a leisure business that might help a health programme if asked; it is a piece of the delivery system.

Becoming the Hub was where the association tried to establish that with evidence, and to convert it into a commitment by the sector itself rather than a request to anyone else. The association's other European work is described under EU projects.