Last week Blackpool FC Community Trust held their annual festival week at Bloomfield Road and opened its doors to 1,566 children to take part in physical activity festivals delivered by the team. The week was an opportunity to celebrate the great work carried out in the community, with particular emphasis upon the Fit2Go program and the work that the Trust do in local nurseries, which are two separate programs that support healthy lifestyle and physical development of children.
The first three days were dedicated to our healthy lifestyle program, Fit2Go. 1,386 children from 30 of the 32 Blackpool Primary schools attended the three day annual Fit2Go Festival. This is the highest number of schools attending in the seven years of running the free event.
Attendees took part in four different activities across the day, which were Mini Football, Handball, Athletics and Dance. The Fit2Go Festival encourages children to take part in a range of different physical activities while also promoting teamwork and social skills throughout.
Last week we delivered our annual #Fit2Go Festival
Take a look at the highlights where we had;
1386 children attend✅
30 out of 32 primary schools✅ pic.twitter.com/3tXblyqGIJ— Blackpool FC Community Trust (@BFCCT_) May 16, 2018
Healthy hydration was also high on the agenda for the Festival as all Year 4 children attending were taking part in our GULP Challenge to encourage children to “Give Up Loving Pop” and think of healthier alternatives such as water or low fat milk. In recent months Blackpool Public Health has highlighted the Fit2Go program as a contributing factor to the decrease in over weight and obese children leaving primary school in 2017.
The final day consisted of two festivals in one day with over 80 young children from nurseries across Blackpool attending a first ever Tiny Tangerines nursery festival held at Bloomfield Road. The children were able to take part in a variety of physical activities on the pitch as well as being given a mini ground tour of the stadium, stopping for photos in the home changing room.
Through physical activity, interactive stories and mini Fit2Go, the Trust offer nurseries a variety of activities that also help develop children’s speech and language, and their number and colour recognition. As part of the Premier League Primary Stars programme that is offered to all primary schools in Blackpool, 11 schools took part in the festival with 100 pupils aged 5-7 in attendance. Pupils had the opportunity to take part in non-competitive football matches against other schools, as well as a variety of football activities such as crossbar challenge and a penalty shootout.
https://twitter.com/BFC_CTrust/status/996766913098285063
Chief Executive, Ashley Hackett, adds that “We are incredibly proud of the work we do with Nurseries and Schools across Blackpool and each year we look forward to celebrating this with our annual festival at Bloomfield Road. This year was a great success and we look forward to building upon this again by making next year even more successful.”
For further information on any of this, please email office@bfcct.co.uk or telephone 01253 348691.
