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.
Want to hear more about Love to Move? Sign up for regular updates.