‘Physical activity insecurity’ as experienced by LGBTQ+ children and young people living with deprivation: what would safe spaces for physical activity look like for this community?
Research Team: Caroline Dodd-Reynolds, Hannah Fairbrother, Victoria Goodyear, Scarlet Hall, Mary Crowder
Who's involved: Fuse, University of Sheffield, PHRESH
1st July 2023 – 31st December 2024
This project will provide evidence about the needs of LGBTQ+ young people in designing and facilitating safe and inclusive physical activity spaces. This will help inform policy change at a local level. The evidence will also be used to update national training and professional guidance provided by physical activity and sports organisations.
LGBTQ+ young people can find it hard to be physically active in their local area, as they may feel bullied, harassed or that physical activity spaces are not inclusive for them. This project will consider the experiences of LGBTQ+ young people, particularly in more deprived areas where it can be worse. This will help us understand how physical activity can be made safer and more inclusive. This information will be used to help inform local policy change and to update the guidance provided by sports organisations and others.
This research project will consider how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, and others (LGBTQ+) young people have experienced physical activity in their local areas.
We will work with LGBTQ+ youth groups in England (~13–21 years based on our previous research with youth groups), to better understand what is needed and who is needed to make different types of physical activity feel safer and more inclusive. We will also work with ‘trusted adults’ (e.g., teachers, local physical activity practitioners and policymakers, youth leaders) who can help these young people to be active and feel safe.
The youth groups will be based in more deprived areas in England because we know that physical activity is even harder to achieve for LGBTQ+ young people living in these communities.
We already know that young people, in particular LGBTQ+ young people, find it hard to be physically active in their local area. Our earlier research has already demonstrated that young people know where they could be active (for example outdoors in open spaces, or at their local leisure centre if one existed, or at school/college). The problem was that they had often felt bullied, harassed, or that physical activity spaces did not feel inclusive for them. For some young people, because of these negative experiences, they would now be very unlikely to feel safe taking part in any kind of activity at all, including sport, exercise, or even going for a walk on their own. However, the young people also told us that they felt more confident to be active with each other, or when a trusted adult helped organise activities for them.
We will hold workshops with youth groups and trusted adults involved in young people’s physical activity in the north of England and ask them to design a visual overview (e.g., 2D diagram or 3D model) model of what ‘safe physical activity places’ might look like, and who would be there with them. Researchers will guide the sessions, but importantly, it will be the young people and trusted adults who design the model. The young people and adults will work in separate groups.
We will work with some local children and young people’s groups, who are experienced in designing research. They will help us to decide how to run the workshops with the young people, and importantly, how to make sure that the young people feel able to make decisions and have their voice heard. We will also make sure that the researchers are trained to use the right language and terminology linked to LGBTQ+ young people.
The diagram or model created by the young people and trusted adults, along with the conversations we have as we are making the model, will then be turned into short videos, a poster, and some written guidelines that will help those who provide physical activity opportunities for LGBTQ+ young people. We already have public and practice partners who have told us they are interested in hearing about our findings. These include the NSPCC, the Association for PE and Pride Sports.
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