Birmingham City Council is testing a new toolkit designed to help community groups turn major sporting events—starting with the 2026 European Athletics Championships—into lasting local benefits. The problem is that while cities invest heavily in hosting events like the Commonwealth Games, the promised legacies of increased sport participation and community engagement often fail to materialise. Local organisations lack practical, evidence-based guidance on how to leverage these events effectively. This fellowship directly addresses that gap by co-creating resources with the council’s Sport Strategy Team. If successful, the project will produce two publicly accessible toolkits: one for community organisations and a new one tailored for individuals, especially young people. It will also generate a video archive of residents’ memories of past Birmingham events, providing the council with a permanent legacy resource. The research could shift how local authorities plan for future events, turning a temporary spectacle into a sustained boost to community engagement and skills development. The findings will help Birmingham maximise its “Golden Decade of Hosting Major Sporting Events” by giving practitioners concrete tools rather than vague aspirations.
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Through co-creation with the Birmingham City Council’s Sport Strategy Team, the overall research aim of the Fellowship is to promote and maximise the positive impacts of major sporting events on local organisations, communities, and individuals, while understanding behaviour related to community engagement and sport participation. The Fellowship is planned to achieve the following three objectives. Firstly, building on previous collaboration between the mentor and the Sport Strategy Team, this project aims to further disseminate the established “Major Sporting Event Engagement Toolkit” (designed for community-based groups and organisations) and test its feasibility through two pilot cases. Dissemination and recruitment for the pilot will take place by supporting the delivery of knowledge exchange events, including educational training workshops, led by the Sport Strategy Team as part of the series of community-focused events for the 2026 European Athletics Championships. These knowledge exchange sessions aim to share academic evidence on leveraging major events for local community development, raise awareness about the impacts and legacy of hosting such events, and encourage community-based organisations, sports groups, and clubs to explore and use the toolkit in their initiatives. Additionally, customisation support will be offered to pilot organisations, helping them implement the toolkit with a focus on the 2026 Championships. The fellow will have access to all training workshops and interactive sessions, which is the professional support provided by Birmingham City Council. Secondly, the fellow’s research expertise in understanding community collective memory and qualitative storytelling has been positively received by the research team and partner and appears to align well with the overall legacy vision. Consequently, the Sport Strategy Team has suggested opportunities for further collaboration on other ongoing programmes underpinned by the 2026 European Championships’ Impact Plan, particularly those related to the young people’s Jobs and Skills pillar and the city-wide engagement network pillar. Digital storytelling method is adopted here for the study design. This collaboration will explore ways to encourage programme participants to share their individual memories of past major sporting events hosted in Birmingham through several interactive workshops. These voluntarily submitted raw data will be developed into video series, made publicly accessible, and will serve as an integral legacy for the Council. They will also be analysed by the fellow to examine both individual and collective memories of major sporting events, comparing short-term with long-term memories. The findings will provide practical insights into understanding individual behaviours related to event engagement in the long run. Thirdly, insights and digital memory data from Objective 2, along with evaluation data collected through the Jobs and Skills pillar and the existing dataset from the previous collaboration project, will collectively inform the development of a new "Major Sporting Event Engagement Toolkit" tailored for individuals, especially young people. This toolkit is regarded as a direct output of translating research into practice as a key outcome of this Fellowship. It will be made publicly accessible and will specifically support Birmingham City Council’s strategic vision for the "Golden Decade of Hosting Major Sporting Events", aiming to maximise individual-level benefits. The evaluation data collected through partnership working with various programmes will involve input from the research team to inform the survey design, specifically to capture behavioural intention changes related to event engagement. Meanwhile, the fellow will develop this individual based and personal experience informed toolkit for the partner organisation.
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