Bristol Rugby pipped Saracens, Bath Rugby and Northampton Saints to the top award after a panel of judges unanimously crowned their ‘Phoenix Project: Bright Sparks Programme’ as the winner.  The four clubs battled for the title after being named as category winners in the first round.  

‘Bright Sparks’ is a social inclusion programme that utilizes the highest quality rugby union skills, drills and games, with team building and leadership workshops.  The aim is to attain rapport with, and re-engage designated young people from schools in high risk areas back into the educational process.  Working in partnership with organisations such as, Avon Fire & Rescue Service, Avon & Somerset Police and SERCO Prisons, the programme provides young people with direct and tangible examples of how poor life choices will directly affect their lives. 

The awards were judged by a panel including; Derek Wyatt MP, Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group, Robert Walter MP, Treasurer of the All Party Parliamentary Group, Mark McCafferty, CEO of Premier Rugby Ltd, Kevin Roberts, Editorial Director of SportBusiness Magazine and Alex MacGillivray, Senior Partner at Accountability.

The All-Party Parliamentary Rugby Citizenship Awards salute the commendable work that the 12 Guinness Premiership clubs carry out within their communities. The community schemes undertaken by clubs address four key areas: Grass Roots Participation, Health, Social Inclusion and Education. 

Winners commended in the first round were also awarded on the night as follows;

 Health Programme of the Year – Northampton Saints ‘Kick Smoking into Touch’.

Participation Programme of the Year – Saracens ‘Community Dance Programme’.

Social Inclusion Programme of the Year – Bristol Rugby ‘The Phoenix Project: Bright Sparks Programme’. Commendations to: Worcester Warriors ‘Worcestershire npower tag inclusive programme’.

Education programme of the Year – Bath Rugby ‘Language Through Sport’.

Which would be more influential on the outcome of the election: the TV debates or social media?

The audience (or at least those who could prise their fingers and thumbs away from their Blackberry’s long enough to vote) resoundingly backed the TV debates - perhaps swayed by Nick Robinson’s forecast that the TV audience for this ’first’ in British broadcasting would be 10m.

[This will be a hard number to beat online. Gordon Brown's interview with Piers Morgan pulled 4m viewers as a comparison.]

There’s no doubt this question is the hot debating topic of the moment and it is clearly focussing the politicians and political parties too.

The power of the internet to mobilise party activists, raise funds and communicate can’t be doubted.  But the question of who is listrening and engaging is less clear and whether that will change a vote or not was not convincingly. After 30 minutes no one had put a number against this or clearly identified outside activists a segment.

But this didnt stop many other interesting points being made:

Nick Robinsons rated the video camera as the most potent ‘new media’ device for the fact it will capture an unguarded or unscripted moment and then go national via Youtube. 

Blue Slate Digital rated email the most powerful tool.

Most agreed Twitter was the joker in the election pack and ‘anarchic’ tool. 

Net net the conclusion was: it’s new days for new media and we don’t quite know how or where or who it will impact.

My take is this: whether we are marketers, corporate or public affairs director we need to observe this election closely because elections are like war. New technologies and tactics get tested. Everything gets pushed to the limits sometimes beyond control or good sense. [We will see Election Law and libel examined in these conditions and it will be online that the test will come]. Victory and defeat will both yield insights. 

We’ll see the new wave in communciations tactics played out under the guise of electioneering. 

So well done to City University and the Media Trust for staging the event.

Aside from being stimulating, for a brief moment, #Cityvote was a trending topic on Twitter.

Last month, a global conference took place in Washington D.C., organized by CropLife and CAST, where a panel of science and policy experts gathered to debate how best to address future food insecurities. The panelists discussed the possibilities of innovation in agriculture, highlighting the need for increased investment in agricultural research and in enabling farmers to access new technology.

As the five panelists sat in front of an audience of a couple of hundred, thousands of others around the world watched the debate live online. Joined up to the webcast, a twitter conversation gave people the chance to ask their 140-character questions that were then addressed by the panelists within the studio.  Policy and science-heavy conversations are often shut away from the general public and left for the industry players to discuss amongst themselves. This time however, the global nature of food security was given prominence by becoming an interactive universal debate.

At the conference, Dr. Norman Borlaug’s last words were revealed, written shortly before his death last year. Borlaug, known as the Father of the Green Revolution, has been called the ‘man who has saved more lives than any other’ for his research into increasing rice and wheat productivity in the 1960s. Fifty years on, whether or not to proceed with a second green revolution is subject to debate, but the level of discussion it does inspire is integral to assuring that agriculture retains a high position on the political agenda.

 Active Communities Network and Premier Rugby, in partnership with Drinkaware, have come up with a ground breaking new project, which will see specially trained community staff from Premiership Rugby Clubs and local youth workers deliver sports based alcohol education to young people aged 13-19.  The campaign, ‘Side Stepping Alcohol Misuse’ is the highest funded scheme Drinkaware have endorsed, contributing £100,000 of funds to the project. 

Chris Sorek, Chief Executive of Drinkaware said “earlier young people have alcohol, the more likely they are to binge drink in their teenage years and develop alcohol problems later in life – which is why it’s imperative young people put off drinking for as long as possible. Changing young people’s attitudes and behaviours towards drinking can be a difficult task but teaming sports with alcohol education is a great way to help get the message across.” 

Players from the 12 Guinness Premiership clubs will take part in the programme, including Dan Ward Smith of the London Wasps who believes the players are in the best position to deliver this important message.  He hopes to educate youngsters on the effects alcohol can have on their bodies, their judgement and their relationships. 

For further information on ‘Side Step Alcohol Misuse’ please visit, www.guinnesspremiership.com/community/drinkaware.

Willetts’ new book, ‘The Pinch’, looks at the legacy of the baby boomers – who benefitted from generous pension schemes and economic prosperity, but have left a legacy that is no way near as generous to those generations coming up behind. Yet, research shows that people are more likely to modify their behaviour if they recognise themselves as guardians for future citizens.

Kampfner’s thoughts, which are also set out in a new book, ‘Freedom for sale’, describe how a rising middle class actually produces a type of voter apathy, where citizens are happy to not rock the boat, and in exchange for certain rights, will accept some intrusions by the state – such as the surveillance society.

In the run up to a general election, these are interesting thoughts indeed. Will a new administration redress the imbalances that the baby boomer generation arguably created? Will a rising middle class really let the government get away with more? Or will the shaking of the status quo brought about by the worst recession since the war reinvigorate citizens, and a new administration, to turn things around?

The Savvy Citizens campaign from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, will be covering the topic of citizenship for six weeks from 1st March. Discussions on the topic will be channelled through the site http://savvycitizens@bcs.org and Twitter @SavvyCitizens, and can also be found on Facebook and LinkedIn. It will be interesting to see what the public will want to discuss concerning the relationship of the citizen and the state. Will the concerns of the authors come through?

The aim of the campaign is to educate the public about the benefits of information, and information technology. There is now a wealth of information available to citizens, often just a few clicks away on the Internet, but unless people are aware of the information, know how to access it and are able to use and manage it, the benefits of just having the information out there will be limited.

The Institute’s campaign will cover a topic at a time, for six weeks each and eight topics in total – they are: safety, wellness, citizenship, communication, environment, culture, commerce and work.

The site aims to be resource that the public can visit as the first port of call when researching an area. A helpful resources page lists relevant and reliable information located on other sites, and comments from other users share helpful advice and experiences.

Visit the Savvy Citizens site and let the Savvy Citizens team know what you think at savvycitizens@bcs.org.

Glasshouse Partnership is here on behalf of one of our clients, discussing the role of agriculture as part of a climate solution.  (Agriculture is responsible for 14% of total emissions, more than the entire transport sector, yet better farm practices can help reduce carbon emissions and the amount of other resources, like water, used to grow the world’s food.)

Inside the convention center, it is truly a microcosm of the “global community” at large. From NGO representatives to businesspeople, policymakers to policemen, the task of communicating on climate change is fascinating to watch as it unfolds.

Here are some observations if you weren’t able to make it here yourselves:

• A COMMUNICATIONS MAELSTROM:  There are so many people here from all over the world that those who have not firmed up their communications strategies before arriving seem to be running to stand still.  Apparently, more than 25,000 conference hopefuls were turned back at the door this morning.  (We made sure to get some good coverage ahead of the conference in the Guardian, on the official COP15 website, and on sustainability blogs like justmeans.com to make sure our messages were being heard.)

• SHOCK TACTICS: Many civil society groups are attracting attention by staging public stunts within the conference centre itself.  There are singing polar bears, climate pirates, and people wearing masks of world leaders in various positions/costumes. (That’s quite a juxtaposition from the average delegate’s dress code.)  These tactics draw media interest, but risk aggravating decision-making delegates or sending the wrong message.  For instance, a recent shock advert (depicting polar bears falling from the sky) from Plane Stupid was widely criticised as unhelpful to the cause.

• COMMUNICATING TO DIFFERENT AUDIENCES: More than perhaps anything else, I have watched how a complex issue like climate change has been communicated to different audiences who have different interests and levels of knowledge.  Climate spans economic issues (subsidies/tax/trade, ‘green’ innovation, risk management) governance issues (who gets funding, who is the watchdog, who determines priorities, how carbon markets should be established), scientific issues (emissions targets, counting carbon, geo-engineering) as well as social issues (food security, rural livelihoods development, environmental sustainability, migration).  While it has been fascinating to hear different views on these subjects, some of the most compelling communications have been the simplest (for instance, “COP15: No Agriculture, No Deal”).  Getting this balance right makes communications so much easier.

The Katine website is a 3-year project launched by the Guardian to explore in new, more in-depth ways how development aid impacts communities on the ground.  Funded by Guardian readers (through a Christmas appeal), the Katine project is a more ‘hands-on’ approach to understanding how aid works (or doesn’t).

Guardian journalists report from the Ugandan village of Katine, alongside the NGOs and local people about whom they file stories.  They distribute video cameras to locals to capture their own experiences, and they help locals comment on the stories which are written about them.  Most aspects of aid are covered from agriculture and rural development, health, education, resource management, and politics.

This project brings up some compelling questions about the future of journalism, particularly in a development context:

• How does ‘embedding’ journalists within these communities change the nature of the coverage?
• What role does technology play in opening more interactive and insightful dialogues between Guardian readers, development practitioners, and the Ugandan locals in Katine?
• Does this threaten or enhance the role of the media as an objective arbiter of news?

The SportBusiness Group hosted a stimulating conference last week on Women and Sport at the CBI Centre in London. The conference brought together a wide range of stakeholders including professional female athletes, business leaders, sponsors and the media, with the aim of looking at the growing world of women and sport in the UK and its future.

One of the main themes coming out of the conference was the notion of untapped potential existing in women’s sport: panelists sought to address the questions of how to build on existing momentum and how to take advantage of the great opportunity at hand for women’s sport to have a much broader positive impact in the UK and beyond over the next decade.

The panels explored the issues from a variety of perspectives–the media, sponsorship, marketing and funding–and it proved to be a comprehensive approach. The discussions forced participants to think through pressing issues of how to legitimize women in sports, how women and men consume sports differently, the acceptability of marketing female athletes as sex objects, how sport can be made more accessible to a wider audience, and the crucial roles that men can play in supporting women’s sports, among much more.

As an ex-professional female athlete, I can say that these are all issues with which I am quite familiar and I found the dialogue generated at this event to be quite useful. Throughout my soccer career, after recognizing that not even the majority of my own teammates enjoy watching the women’s game, I came to the conclusion that something major in the marketing of many women’s sports needs to change, or maybe even in the game itself–a smaller field, perhaps?

While the panelists at this conference did not offer a silver bullet on how to reframe or propel women’s sports into a new realm–nor could we expect this of them–the conversations were very engaging and presented some innovative approaches.

I would agree that there is a huge untapped potential in women’s sports from numerous angles–sporting, commercial, cultural, health and general well-being–but I believe that unleashing this potential is going to require a complete paradigm shift. What that looks like, I am still brainstorming.

Caitlin Fisher is interning periodically at Glasshouse Partnership.  She is currently studying an MSc in international development at the London School of Economics and was formerly a professional football player in the US, Brazil, and Sweden.

• Account Executive, Technology
• Account Executive, Sustainability

Both candidates will have good writing skills and ideally an understanding of social media. Each of the positions will introduce the graduate to a variety of PR/marketing activities, including research, media pitching, drafting press releases and articles, as well as contributing to social media initiatives for a range of clients.

Account Executive, Technology This position would be suitable for someone interested in technolgy. Glasshouse has notable clients in this area and although a detailed understanding of technology is not required, an interest and ability to learn about the subject is vital.

Account Executive, Sustainability This position would be suitable for someone interested in the intersection between sustainability issues and the private sector. Glasshouse works with a number of clients in the areas of sustainable agriculture, education, environmental reporting, and business ethics/corporate governance.

To be considered, please send a copy of your CV with covering letter to luciab@glasshousepartnership.com

More information about Glasshouse Partnership can be found at www.glasshousepartnership.com or on Twitter @glasshouse