ExCeL London, UK

ExCeL London, UK

18 Jun - 19 Jun 2025

For further information on exhibiting contact Lucy Findlay-Beale, Event Director.

IICC Dwarka, Delhi, India

IICC Dwarka, Delhi, India

25 Sep - 26 Sep 2025

For further information on exhibiting contact Lucy Findlay-Beale, Event Director

Beyond the gym; building strength and friendships under an open sky and creating long-term physical activity habits through more that just ‘exercise’…

Thursday 13th June 14:30 - 15:10

Collaborate

For much of history, we needed to be physically active every day in order to hunt or gather food — or to avoid becoming food ourselves. It was an active lifestyle, but one thing it didn't include was any kind of formal exercise. The idea of “doing exercise" - movement for movement's sake - is a contrived and relatively new phenomenon.

For those of us that find it hard to stick to, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Using examples from their work, the panel will discuss:

  • How we can help more people to start to move more so they can keep on moving and keep joining in.
  • Theories of wellbeing that will help shift the current narrative from what can I do, to what can we do together.
  • Case studies from across the country and different demographics.
  • The motivations from across their communities that keep people coming back, time after time, throughout the seasons. Looking particularly at the motivating power of connection, with ourselves and our bodies, our communities and the natural world around us.
  • The barriers that many face to accessing the outdoors and creating sustainable physical activity habits.

By the end of the session you will go away with an actionable checklist and resources on how you can help more people see movement, play, connection, time outdoors and part of their lives, forever.

Speakers

Gill Erskine

Co-Founder and Director

Wildstrong

Gill is the co-founder and Director of WildStrong. Before starting WildStrong, Gill founded, scaled and sold a food production business and prior to that she was Managing Director of a locally grown baby food company in Sierra Leone.

Gill holds a Masters in Environmental Politics from King's College London and during her early career worked in communications for environmental NGOs in Brussels the London.

Gill was brought up mostly outdoors in the east neuk of Fife. A natural community builder, Gill started WildStrong as she wanted to create space for people to spend more time outdoors and meet others who lived very locally.

She has always been a mover rather than an exerciser and wanted to create a space for those that will never go to a gym but do want to move more and get stronger.

In 2023, Gill was recognised as one of the UK’s most inspirational and dynamic female entrepreneurs by the f:Entrepreneur ‘#ialso100’ campaign.

Andrew Telfer MPH

Head Coach

Wildstrong

Andrew is a public health professional and is passionate about health promotion and creating achievable exercise for longevity.

Andrew holds a Master in Public Health and has over 15 year’s experience of strength & conditioning coaching, personal training and course development.

“I think the fitness industry took a wrong turn when it adopted a top down model of fitness education. I also feel there is too much emphasis on working out alone and the collection of arbitrary data. WildStrong is the opportunity to embed movement in a community setting, with tangible benefits, creating a peer-lead, distributed model of health practice.”

Additional info:

  • Masters in Public Health
  • As a trainer worked with both professional athletes and general population.
  • Over 10 years as a CrossFit coach, Olympic weightlifting, and competitive fitness.
  • Co-founded WildStrong in 2021 to bridge the gap between public health and local, community-based physical activity.
  • Believes that the key to health and longevity lies in building community-based cross connections.

Rick Jenner

CEO

Park Play

Rick is CEO of ParkPlay, a health and wellbeing charity with a mission to build happier, healthier communities nationwide through the life-changing power of play. Before joining ParkPlay at its inception in early 2020 Rick was Strategy Director at sports marketing and mass participation agency Limelight Sports, working with clients such as Team GB and Fitbit. Rick started his career working at a number of well-known media and telecoms brands in marketing and strategy, including The Times, ITV and Virgin Media, before following his passion into sport and health.

Katherine Knight

Director

Intelligent Health

Katherine has over twenty-five years’ experience in sport and physical activity and is passionate about making a positive impact at scale. She began at The Football Association in the nineties as part of a small team working on women’s football. She built the first ever Marketing and Communication strategy which helped it become the top female participation sport in England, second team participation sport (to men’s football) and even shifted cultural norms for women. It was mission led, put the athletes at the centre and made transformative change.

For the last 10 years she has been a Director at Intelligent Health, founded by Dr William Bird MBE, where the focus is on tackling inequalities, ill health and climate change through building active communities. Katherine has guided the growth of a mass participation game called Beat the Street that encourages people to improve their health through small changes to daily behaviour – through walking, wheeling and cycling. Typically 10% of a place takes part, with the largest game in Sheffield attracting 60,000 participants – adults and children. Using social marketing and trusted behaviour change techniques it’s become one of the most effective mass behaviour change programmes in public health.

Katherine has led Beat the Street’s national work with Sport England since 2017, building it into a programme that has been taken across England and is now recognised as a transformational tool for places. The programme combines community engagement, behavioural science, data insight, project management and marketing expertise. It all sits on digital platform that allows delivery at scale and leverages innovative technology and gamification.

Beat the Street works like a high-profile mass sports event hosted in a place, but for residents themselves to take part, turning where they live and work into a playground and allowing them to enjoy spending time together whatever their age or ability. It works because it’s easy, accessible simple and timely but most of all it’s fun. For places and partners, it provides access to valuable data that can drive insight for health and the wider system to deliver population level change.

Beat the Street has worked in over 170 places and with 1.8 million participants. Typically, 87% register and of these, 53% are adults and 47% children. With Sport England there have been 57 places and over 730,000 participants. Tackling inequality sits at the heart and data shows a third have joined from IMD 1-2 populations, 71% of adult participants are women, 19% have a disability or long-term condition, and there is over-representation or mirrored Black, Asian and other ethnically diverse groups compared to local data sets. There is an on average an 8% decrease in inactivity for adults following the game phase.

In her spare time, Katherine is Chair of Rounders England and although she has retired from playing football she still loves heading out for walks with her family and friends.

All Enquiries

 

For all enquiries please contact us at: info@elevatearena.com