This time last year, during Dementia Awareness Week, we launched our very first crowdfunding campaign to raise money for our Love to Move programme.

Thanks to the generosity of so many people, and with British Gymnastics agreeing to match any donation made, we managed to raise £14,296 which is allowing us to continue growing the programme.

During that week we released research conducted by Age UK about Love to Move, confirming that “the programme has a demonstrable benefit in the physical, emotional and cognitive aspects of older people and those older people having mild to advanced forms of dementia appear to benefit the most.” Download the research.

We also released the very first Love to Move booklet as a free download, meaning that the programme was made available for everyone. The booklet included some of the asymmetric movements that make Love to Move unique and has since been downloaded a staggering 173,000 times! Download your copy and try the exercises at home.

Also during that week, Patrick Bonner, Head of British Gymnastics Foundation, was invited on to the famous BBC Breakfast sofa to show some of the movements that are behind the programme’s success. Relive our visit to the BBC Breakfast sofa.

Since that week, our programme continues to go from strength-to-strength. In October last year we were delighted to be awarded National Lottery funding from Sport England as part of their Active Aging Fund. The funding will assist the development and expansion of our Love to Move programme over the next four years.

Love to Move update
In January this year, we were delighted to appoint Steve Peters as our Love to Move Manager. Steve has been working hard to identify partners for the programme, including National Health Service Clinical Commissioning Groups, Local Authority Public Health and Adult Social Care, care providers and community organisations around the UK.

In the last month work has begun to develop the programme in the other home nations, with Scotland and Northern Ireland already involved and initial conversations having begun with Wales.

We are also working with a group of British Gymnastics tutors to develop an education resource, so that we can train and then deliver Love to Move to more people. The course will be a formal qualification and will include a mixture of online learning, two days of training with a tutor, separated by eight weeks of practical delivery.

The first pilot of the course will be in September and the intention is for the course to be fully developed for launch in January 2019.

Our brilliant coach Kim Hall is now the Love to Move Lead Programme Deliverer and we will be advertising for three Love to Move local programme deliverer posts in Bedfordshire & Cambridge, Merseyside & Cheshire and Greater London this week.

Exactly a year on Dementia Awareness Week has come back around, and we have a challenge that you can get involved in on social media. We’re encouraging people to film themselves trying the Love to Move exercise below. Share your attempt, challenge your friends and text MOVE40 £3 to 70070 to donate £3.

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Today marks the start of Dementia Awareness Week (21st-27th May), and we want you to take part in our Love to Move challenge.

Love to Move is an age and dementia friendly cognitive enhancement seated gymnastics programme, which to date has had remarkable results.

You can read more about Love to Move and download a free Love to Move booklet which includes some of the core exercises, by visiting our Love to Move page.

For Dementia Awareness Week we want you to try one of the movements that make our programme so unique.

Here’s the challenge, set out by Olympic medallist Kristian Thomas. Head to Facebook or Twitter to get involved and post your attempts. Make sure you use #LovetoMovechallenge.

We were delighted to send a family to the 2018 Gymnastics British Championships, all because of our Inspirational Experiences Programme.

Our programme funding aims to deliver unforgettable and inspirational experiences for individuals and British Gymnastics clubs experiencing crisis or extreme financial hardship.

On this occasion it was a friend of the family that got in touch with us to let us know of the difficult time they’d had. Matthew’s wife passed away in October last year, and he was desperate to give his three children something to look forward to.

Matthew said: “It helped them to have the event on the calendar – and fortuitously it also fell on Mother’s Day weekend which meant there was a distraction for them to lessen the pain of the day.

“My daughters, aged 16, 14 and 12, participate at a recreational level in gymnastics (and the elder two also coach) and have never been to see a top-level competition. They were all delighted with the day and got selfies with Max Whitlock at the end!

“The experience helped provide a valuable weekend of ‘family time’ for us and created lasting happy memories. Even better that the weekend was on Mother’s Day weekend and we were away from home on what was the first such day since their Mother’s death. Thank you all.”

Over the past three years our Inspirational Experience Programme has seen individuals like Libby, who lost her mum after her battle with Leukemia, being given the life-changing opportunity to do gymnastics for the first time. We were also delighted to give Kendal Gym Club a time to remember after their club was devastated by the flooding that hit Cumbria in 2015.

Patrick Bonner, Head of British Gymnastics Foundation said: “We were so sorry to hear about the traumatic time that Matthew and his three daughters are going through. It’s a privilege to be able to help families like theirs through our Inspirational Experiences Programme and to witness the positive differences that gymnastics can bring. For clubs in crisis and people struggling with mental health issues or gymnasts dealing with injury, our inspirational experiences can do just that; inspire and motivate!

“We wouldn’t be able to create these experiences and create happy memories for those most in need without the support and donations from our community. So, a huge thank you from me, to all of you who support us to make this possible.”

If you think that British Gymnastics Foundation Support could benefit you or your club, please contact us and tell us your story – [email protected].