OAW : 2009 For info on OAW 2010 CLICK HERE
Outdoor Adventure Week 2009 smashes targets
NEWS
After wonderful success with OAW09 and its 5600 events, we have been honoured by the BBC. They have offered an opportunity to link ‘OAW-2010’ with shortly to be launched BBC ‘Zone’ web-pages. The plan is to create an adventure version of ‘Breathing Spaces’ using the BBC web site. This is an invitation for all involved in outdoor adventure to promote what they are doing and to offer events to aspiring adventurers. The pages will be searchable geographically, by activity and by level of activity, thus post-code, canoeing and advanced should allow providers to promote their offerings and potential clients to find the right activity, in the right place at the right level. This is a great opportunity for the adventure world to promote itself and create support greater participation. Key target areas are families and progression from first-timers to improving ability. The list of partners is already building and a full article will appear in Horizons in December.
From Ian Lewis
Co-ordinator, Campaign for Adventure
Outdoor Adventure Week exceeded its target of 5,000 events UK-wide.
Supported by Ray Mears and Dame Ellen Macarthur, this year’s Outdoor Adventure Week took place from 16-23 May 2009 at 5800+ venues across the UK.
Events ranged from huge national, to small local activities. Brathay Hall Trust, the national youth charity hosted ‘ten in ten’ – ten marathons in ten days for the experienced, with 900 running the full Brathay Windermere Marathon around beautiful Lake Windermere. |
Brathay 10 in 10 winners – all records smashed |
Ian Lewis, coordinator for Campaign for Adventure, on behalf of the Outdoor Council, said: “Outdoor Adventure Week was launched in 2008 to celebrate and promote adventure and the outdoors. This year we easily doubled the number of events. It just goes to show that people are excited and enthused by being in the outdoors and the benefits this brings.” |
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OAW09 encouraged everyone from organised clubs, schools, outdoor centres and families to get involved and experience the outdoors, using the opportunity to raise media profile and support more understanding of the outdoors and what it offers. During the week under the strap-line ‘No risk, No life; Know risk, Know life’, Campaign for Adventure increased its efforts to ensure a balanced attitudes to risk is encapsulated within UK culture.
Three special highlights for OAW09: MPs climb an ice wall in London in support OAW09, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, at 65, summits Everest for Marie Curie Cancer Care, the Dept for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform [BERR] called on us all to review our attitude to risk saying that the payoff needs to be a part of the understanding and any decision ‘before any more rules are written’ See The Worrier’s Guide’ at www.campaignforadventure.org.
Ian continues: “We’ve attracted all kinds of interest this year, for example Clubs for Young People held their annual 100 mile canoe test, with around 140 young people paddling 100 miles in canoes and kayaks, and then a family from West Sussex travelling along the course of the Arun River as a family fun day. Many schools and activity centres have linked their week’s publicity to OAW09, increasing their media profile substantially.”
“We wanted to go bigger and better than last year and it has happened. It’s been a fantastic week of events."
Some background to OAW
In 2008, 2900 events around UK were organised by centres, schools, clubs and communities. There were 1200 forest events, and 1000 events linked to camping and other overnights. There were events for ‘Wild Women’, and fund-raising abseils, sleep-outs and picnics….these things happened in your area and they both raised the profile of the organisations that got involved raised awareness of the outdoors. All increased participation and some mademoney, too. The idea throughout is to have local people do it for themselves, but using the OAW09 national publicity.
- For 2009, we want double the events. You are invited to use this free opportunity to
- Challenge people to do something today they have never done before.
- Raise your profile by joining what people are doing for OAW09.
- Get adventure ideas from young people, parents, local activity providers such as bike hirers, outdoor centres, event promoters, communities, sports clubs, schools, local councils, fitness centres, community groups….all are welcome to join OAW09
Examples: lifestyle change and just doing something different. Check the web for ideas. It may be simply using your feet instead of the car, or biking somewhere special or eating or sleeping in the garden. The weather looks ok!
Think various budgets [picnics and walks are free, boating and climbing costs something, and adventure parks cost a little more]. Museums and art galleries less.
Some ‘heavier’ angles: Plenty of research has shown that people grow in their self esteem through adventure and this has been proved to show:
enhanced personal and social involvement, communication skills, more healthy, enhanced mental and spiritual health, enhanced spiritual, sensory and aesthetic awareness, personal confidence, increased awareness, and of course a greater sense of fun!.
The 2008 event was launched in London – 3 MPs climbed an ice wall!![Lembit Opik LD, Julian Brazier, Cons, Lord Allen Haworth, Lab], and in Cumbria, Brathay Hall Trust broke World Records - Man’s and Woman’s first 10 marathons in ten days running the 26 miles around Lake Windermere!
Contacts: Local contacts you might ‘light touch’ and set yourself up as the ‘orchestrator’ of ‘Outdoor Adventure Week’ in your organisation, area or region – a great promotional move. Ian Lewis, coordinator for Campaign for Adventure on behalf of the Outdoor Council will be available to help. [07802 423502] email: ian@campaignforadventure.org see also www.campaignforadventure.org
IOL are pleased to support the second year of this excellent initiative and hope that both members and non-members will become involved.
The Activity Week organisers are actively looking for places/centres who are running something unusual during that week that we could cover with the national media. The core of the initiative is to equip people locally to gain their own coverage in their own local networks.
photo by Tom Sibbald
Adventure activities provide the ideal opportunity to make children ‘risk aware’ by involving them in practical decision-making in challenging environments.
Lord Adonis
Outdoor Adventure Week 2008
This online manual aims to explain what the programme is about, how it works, and what is involved in being a promoter.
See a report of the first OAW in 2008 here....
Activity Week Index |
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Outdoor Adventure Week Aims
(Achieve, Promote, Contribute)
- To achieve a greater understanding among the general public of the scope of outdoor provision and the benefits of participation, with the aim of increasing demand.
- To promote the value of the outdoors as a venue for healthy exercise, fresh air, recreation and appreciation of the rural and natural environment.
- To contribute to achieving a balanced view of risks and benefits and to promote an adventurous approach to life.
How to get involved...
- If you run a centre. Write to those on your mailing lists and other contacts and encourage them to get involved in the week; by going out into the outdoors for a responsible adventure experience! Run a special day or week at the centre where individuals and families can come and try an activity and challenge themselves. Invite the media to visit you on that day. A media pack will be available from the EOC, free of charge, to help you attract some interest. Use a quote from your own centre or from this web page to promote a special event.
- If you are involved in education. Encourage your school to be doing something adventurous in the outdoors this year. Book a week at a centre. Produce leaflets showing the opportunities that are on offer in your local area. Invite the media to visit some of your initiatives.
- If you are a teacher. Find out if your school organises trips away or day events in the local area that introduce the outdoor environment to children. Look out for the Manifesto for Learning Outside the Classroom and promote more opportunities for young people to learn through a controlled adventure experience. For details go to: IOL LotC web page, or
www.teachernet.gov.uk/learnningoutsidetheclassroom - If you are a parent. Encourage your children to sign up for something this week. Try out a ropes course, walk the hills, take to the water, contact a local activity provider for more ideas.
- If you are a young person. Get on-line and find something that will challenge your life and be really fun!
English Outdoor Council (EOC)
- The Outdoor Adventure Week is an EOC initiative. It is both administered and implemented by Jim Hammett and Ian Lewis of the EOC.
- The EOC is the umbrella body for providers in the outdoor world.
- The aim of the programme is to raise awareness of the benefits of outdoor activity and learning. The intention is to provide support and experience for promotional activities undertaken by providers.
- The plan is that support is provided by the EOC for new and existing outdoor education and learning activities, and together with the providers of these activities, such opportunities are used to promote the benefits of outdoor education and learning.
This can be shown as follows:
- The process of promoting the benefits of outdoor learning and education from additional outdoor sessions is difficult to achieve.
- The EOC have recognised the special promotional skills needed to achieve this, and now plan to work closer together to enskill providers in the marketing and promotion of these activities in order to achieve greater awareness of the educational and learning possibilities of outdoor and adventurous activities.
- There is a lot of such educational and learning work that goes on without any degree of general awareness of the benefit it brings both to individuals and society as a whole. The Outdoor Adventure Week is all about achieving such awareness - for society, policy-makers and funders.
‘Activity Week Promoter’ 
- An ‘Activity Week Promoter’ is someone who ‘champions the cause of outdoor learning’ through promotional activities running alongside a particular activity during [or near] the week of 16th – 23rd May, 2009.
- Given certain standards, all that is required on the part of the outdoor activity provider is a commitment and willingness to undertake the main aim of the Outdoor Adventure Week, which is:
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“raising awareness of the value, purpose, and need for outdoor adventure activities in society”.
- The role of the ‘Promoter’ might be within a paid job role or it might be an entirely voluntary effort; either way it is vital to the better future of Outdoor Adventurous Activities.
photo by Tom Sibbald
Support
- The Outdoor Adventure Week can be built on the back of existing events or can be used to create a new event with an ‘Outdoor Adventure Week’ link. Support for the promotional side is built in by the EOC.
- This media training course in Birmingham is highlighted now on the English Outdoor Council website. Hard copies are also available.
- The area where the the EOC contribution is greatest is in the development of material, supporting and enskilling outdoor providers in the promotion and marketing.
Marketing and Promotion
- The key to the success of the Outdoor Adventure Week is in the marketing and promotion of events by the Promoters
- In explaining what the programme is about, how it works, and what is involved in being a promoter, this manual aims to give some idea of the ways in which this can be achieved.
- Remember, the aim of the game is to tell people about what is going on and what you are doing - at a local, regional, and national; and in any special areas which will help promotion.
- This is not a monopoly on good ideas... you will have your own plans and ideas, some you have used before, some new, some yet to be thought of.
- We hope this manual will both help to start you off and to check some points as you go along. If you've never been involved in a campaign like this before you may need a little help to see the opportunities to move with the others and to really locate the best ways to promote your activity in and through the community.
- There can be no excuse for letting your activity be overlooked just because you are too busy doing it. This is not acceptable in today’s climate of competition for funding, clients and choices.
- Nationally the EOC will aim to profile the campaign in the media and use a celebrity to do this.
photo by Ian Cresswell
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Campaigning
- The question is 'what makes a successful campaign?'.
The answer is: ideas. - All that is required is a little imagination, and a lot of effort behind the one you think will be successful.
- Some are simple and quick, others may take more planning, time and energy.
- Pick the activities that will work for you and are compatible with the resources you have available. Some will be more relevant than others.
- For example, some activities will be of interest to the local media and can be used to generate wider publicity through editorial. Others may be less obviously newsworthy, but could suit special situations and media needs. Be ready with an idea or three!!
- Later on we will look at how to get media coverage. It isn't a step-by-step guide as getting coverage on TV, radio and in the press isn't an exact science - but it should help you avoid some of the common pitfalls which can prevent a potentially good news story ending up in the wastepaper bin.
Campaign Success
- The success or failure of a campaign is often down to the amount of planning which is done before hand. So start planning now and give your campaign the success it deserves!
photo by Randall Williams
Planning
- Start by writing down your aims, objectives, target audience, priorities and the message you want to get across. Once you have defined these, you can work out how best to achieve them.
- Make your aims clear, achievable and realistic.
- Research your target audience as far as possible and consider what events, materials or activities are likely to have the greatest impact.
- Work out how long the campaign will take to organise, remembering that things often take longer than you think.
- Calculate how much the campaign is likely to cost, setting yourself a realistic budget which you can stick to. Zero is OK if you have creativity!
- Find out if any other organisations in your area are planning similar events which might clash or overlap. If so, see how you can work with them instead of competing.
- Plan your activities step by step so you won't miss out or overlook any important links in the chain of events.
Execution
- Work out how things will work in practice and have a contingency plan in case things don't go exactly as you anticipated.
- Make sure you've thought of every eventuality - what if it rains, what if someone gets injured, what if more (or less) people turn up, who's going to do what, have you thought of facilities for the disabled?
- Decide how you're going to publicise your activities - think about advertising, posters, badges leaflets, incentives, events, balloons, displays, and the media. These can all be used successfully if carefully planned as part of the overall campaign. It is much better to use several at the same time than only one or several in a sequence.
- Get your activities into the media using some of the tips in the media section as a guide.
Evaluation
- Once you've carefully planned your campaign, work out how you're going to evaluate the results. How you measure results depends on the nature of the campaign.
- Aim to do it in a way which is more structured than trying to guess feelings or vaguely asking a handful of people what they think.
- Evaluate and monitor each activity as you go along if possible.
- Consider circulating questionnaires among volunteers, workers or the target audience.
- Work out how much you spent to see if you kept within budget.
- Ask yourself some searching question like, did we...
- get the media coverage we hoped for and if no, why not?
- complete the campaign within the agreed timescales?
- print the right number of leaflets or other materials?
- keep a record of interested people to follow-up on? - Work out how you could have done it better if you'd had the benefit of hindsight so you can learn from the experience.
photo by Max Norris
Keep it safe
- You will be responsible if you are the organiser
- You will need to manage the risks, as usual, both emotional & physical, of equipment and activities through your usual risk assessments.
The Media
- The creation of unpaid publicity is probably the single most important component of any campaign. Getting media coverage for an event can often mean the difference between getting your message across to a few hundred people or many thousands of people.
- But with so many representatives from a myriad of organisations competing to get their events and activities publicised, how do you make yours stand out from the crowd and get those all-important column inches or air-time?
- Some are better at getting media coverage than others - so if you're well practised in the art, skip over these pages and move straight on to the ideas for action. If on the other hand you have little or no experience of using the media, this brief guide should point you in the right direction.
- Getting media coverage isn't as difficult as you might think - but it helps if you know a few tricks of the trade. With a bit of planning, many local activities can be made newsworthy to local newspapers, radio and even regional television. After all, their bread and butter is local news, made by local people.
Local media
Take a bit of time to study your local media - find out what sort of stories are features and what kind of photos are used. Time spent in this way will be invaluable as it will help you tailor your story in the right way. Your local library should be able to help with copies of local press, as well as the addresses of radio and TV stations which cover your area.
Briefly, by local media, we mean:
- Regional daily and weekly newspapers - both paid for and free sheets
- BBC Radio and Independent Local Radio (commercial) stations
- Community radio stations/hospital radio/shopping centre radio stations
- Regional BBC and Independent Television (ITV)
- Community channels on cable television
A Newsworthy Story
What makes a newsworthy story? This is the 64 million dollar question!
- There is no easy answer to this as what may get coverage one week, may not get coverage another week, simply because of what else is going on at the same time. For example,, if there's a royal visit in your area or a major 'hard' news story like a serious crime, the local media will concentrate on that, leaving less space for your 'softer' news.
- If an event is by local people and for local people, there is a good chance that the media in that area will cover it - as long as you approach them in the right way - SO USE THE LOCAL PEOPLE APPROACH!! It is the initial CONTACT which often makes the difference between whether a story is used or not.
- It is a cliche, but a picture really does say a thousand words, so if you can make your event or activity visually appealing, then your story stands a better chance of being used, or perhaps used more prominently. Always think photos!
- If you are organising an event, can you make it fancy dress? Can you get a local celebrity to take part? Anything which makes your story stand out from the pile on the news editor's desk will help its chances of getting coverage. Once you've attracted attention with a picture story, it helps if you can back it up with some solid facts, like the results of a local survey.
- All journalists work to tight deadlines and it is worth checking what they are in advance as these differ from one publication to another. In any case, make sure you let newspapers and broadcasters know in good time that you are planning an event - a week or 10 days is ideal - so they can put it in the diar/ for the actual day and decide whether to cover it. They may also do an advance story, so you might get two bites of the cherry out of one story!
News Releases
- If you've got a news story you want to appear in print or on air, one way to let journalists know is via a news release that contains all the information about your event or activity.
- Don't waste time turning your story into a feature article. If the media is
interested enough, they will get one of their journalists to write one after getting more details from the contact person named on the press release.
A news release should:
- Be headed 'News Release' so journalists can see what it is at a glance.
- Have an informative headline, typed in bold capital letters. Don't worry about making it too clever - the journalists will do that.
- Contain the key facts in the first paragraph, namely Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.
- Have the most important information at the beginning - like an inverted pyramid - with the less important information further down.
- Be typed in double spacing with wide margins on one side of A4.
- Be clear, factual and free of jargon and 'flowery' language. Avoid long sentences and paragraphs.
- Be kept short. The whole thing need not be longer than 300 words - journalists will contact you for more information if they need it.
- Include a quotation from a relevant spokesperson.
- Have numbered pages and 'more' written at the bottom of each page instead of 'PTO'. Put 'End' at the bottom so there can be no mistake.
- Include at least one name and telephone number for journalists to contact for further information.
- Date it for the day it will be read to give it 'freshness', (ie. if you post it on the 1st, date it for the 2nd).
Photocalls
- If you want to invite the press to take a photograph, then you can organise a photocall. To do this, simply prepare a sheet with brief details of the event on it and send it to the media 7-10 days in advance. This should be headed 'Photo Opportunity' or 'Photocall' so journalists can immediately see what it is and act accordingly. In both cases, follow your note with a phone call to see that the event has got into the diary of forthcoming events.
Photographs
- Whether or not you invite the press to send a photographer to cover an event, it is worth arranging for someone to take a photograph for you, in case the newspapers photographer doesn't turn up. A professionally taken photograph is always preferable - amateur snapshots are rarely used unless the photographer is very good.
- Arrange to get the prints to the newspapers as soon after the event as you can - within 24 hours if possible. It is pointless sending photos a week or two after the event, as by that time the news will be stale and very unlikely to be used.
- Make sure the photo is properly captioned, with names and titles of everybody who is pictured (indicating left to right) and send it with a copy of your press release.
Interviews
If you send a news release to local radio or TV or invite broadcast media to an event, you could find yourself being interviewed. This could be live, recorded on location, in the studio or down the telephone.
The simple advice for interviewees is to be prepared with the message you wish to get across. Remember the following rules:
- Check the angle the interviewer wants to take and the first question you will be asked.
- Be prepared - arm yourself with the relevant facts and have a few statistics at your finger tips. Make a list of the three main points you want to make.
- Get your chosen message across as early as possible in the interview.
- Speak in short sentences, not long ones whose meaning could be changed in editing.
- Keep you language informal and avoid jargon.
- Don't be flustered by questions you can't answer. Steer the conversation to an area you know more about.
Other opportunities
- Don't forget, you can also get media coverage for other campaign activities, such as surveys or competitions, as well as events. The findings of surveys are newsworthy if they are about local people, particularly if the results are surprising.
- Competitions are more of a fun way to raise awareness of your campaign
messages, rather than news. Why not get local groups to participate whilst you sponsor prizes and ask the local paper or radio station if they'll run them?
EOC Support + Contact info
- As you can see, the opportunity for promoting your activity and the benefits of outdoor education and learning exist out there a plenty. The key is to work towards achieving this.
- The EOC appreciate the different skills required to do this, and that is why the Outdoor Adventure Week is a learning and development relationship. We plan to provide as much support as we can in order for our 'Promoters' to promote their activities - but real success has to come from a genuine commitment and willingness from participants.
- A special section of the EOC web-site is planned that will allow communication with other Promoters to highlight successes and share ideas. This will be used to reach a wider audience and further develop the programme. Together we can make it grow very large and very effective.
Again, welcome to the Outdoor Adventure Week and we look forward to working with you in making both our efforts a success.