CAMDEN COMMUNITY UPDATE - APRIL 2023

SUPPORTING CARERS ACROSS CAMDEN

Throughout April we were proud to support Carers Active April.  The main aim of the campaign by Carers UK was to support unpaid carers to be more physically active. As part of Carers Active April, we encouraged carers who are Camden residents to join us for a free Carers Welcome session.  These sessions gave carers the opportunity to have a tour of their local centre, meet other carers and try a free activity.  As part of the session they also had the opportunity to discuss the wide range of memberships and activities available to them to suit their needs. We had two welcome sessions, one at Swiss Cottage and one at Kentish Town. The session at Swiss was aimed at carers for children and consisted of an Adult and Child gym sessions taster; meanwhile the session at Kentish Town was aimed at carers for adults and consisted of a swim taster within our Inclusive Swim session. During Carers Active April, we also launched a new, limited-time membership offer for Carers which costs £30 per month and give anytime access to gym, swimming, fitness classes and Health Suite across Camden leisure centres.

This campaign was supported by Camden Council coms team and promoted through the community network.

SWISS COTTAGE COFFEE MORNING SUCCESS

This year the Camden Partnership have partnered with Age UK Camden to host and deliver monthly coffee mornings in our leisure centres throughout the borough. We are excited about this partnership and we hope these opportunities support with tackling social isolation, particularly at this difficult time. On Tuesday 18th April, we held the third coffee morning of the year, this time at Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre. We attracted around 25 people during the hour long session, which is the most we’ve had yet! Massive credit to our Concierge, Inga for encouraging general customers to come and join us for a cuppa and a chat and to learn more about our community. Our 4th coffee morning of this round will be at Pancras Square Leisure on Tuesday 16th May, and then we will be breaking for the summer and resuming the coffee mornings later on in the year to make room for some more exciting projects with Age UK Camden.

Stay tuned for more updates on this partnership.    

NORTH LONDON CARES SOCIAL CLUB

In April we delivered another social club for older people, in an attempt to combat social isolation and keeping older people active. The club consists of an hour of Ballroom and Latin dancing supported by our Community Sport Officer and an hour of wind-down time with refreshments. This month we did a Latin Fusion, which combined some of the dances we had covered in previous months and fused the steps together in fun and interactive way. This is a fantastic way to get the community active and welcome new people into the leisure centre in a non-traditional holistic way. The fact this session is also free and does not require membership relieves the financial pressure and makes it accessible for all.

DJ NIGHT SUCCESS AT KENTISH SPORTS CENTRE

On Thursday 24th April, Kentish Town held an open evening at the centre which included a DJ night, a great event both for attendees of the open evening, but also for existing customer on the day. Kentish usually have a slow April in Kentish due to half-term. With Ramadan falling at the same time and as a residential centre this slows down footfall further. The team decided to hold an open evening once half-term and Ramadan ended to re-engage any old customers and welcome back their existing customers that hadn’t been to the centre in a while. The event was predominantly ran by our Duty Manager, Victor who DJ’d the event; he was supported by our Senior Rec, Ivan (who is also FI/PT qualified) who supervised the fitness challenges on the night. Some customers even jumped on the mic too!

Key Highlights:

• DJ on the night with DJ decks and microphone
• Fruit cups to give away to customers
• Opportunity to bring a friend for free
• Cross promoted to some customers who generally only attend for a single activity (gym or swim)
• A fun introduction to fitness for beginners and a new challenge for our existing customers
• 9 swimmers and 8 people for the gym attended.

Aims and objectives:

• To re-engage our gym users following feedback. Members have wanted more gym equipment and an upgrade but to mitigate the upgrade process, the centre team decided to try and still make the gym a fun experience for members despite the need for a refresh.
• Promoting healthy living to our staff as well as customers
• To open up the gym to the local community

Feedback

• Customers now want it monthly with the challenges advertised so they can practice
• The event helped strengthen an already strong relationship between staff and customers.
• All customers that were involved gave really positive feedback towards the evening.
• Customers wish to vote in challenges more often.
• Pay and play swimmers now booking gym sessions as they no longer have the misconception of the gym being scary and now realise it can be a really fun and friendly environment.

SCHOOLS OUT HOLIDAY SUCCESS

In April, we ran the Easter Half Term ‘School’s Out’ holiday programme and continued with our QR code trial for the holiday activity booklet. The programme featured all the activities and programmes available across all the centres as well as crash courses and term-time activities. In an attempt to support the GLL Green agenda a QR code was created as a trial which featured on internal posters directing scanners to the downloadable programme. As a result we are reducing printing costs and providing customers with accessible information. For the half-term, the QR code had a total of 32 downloads, which was 10 more than we had in February. During half-term we programmed additional Swim for All sessions, junior gym and junior fitness classes as well as 2 weeks of swimming crash courses at Kentish Town which were all fully booked. On Easter Monday, our Senior Recreational Assistant, Ellie, ran an egg decorating competition for children with many prizes up for grabs including chocolate, free day passes and family swims. Easter was a success!

SUPPORTING HEALTH AND WELLBEING IN THE COMMUNITY

On Saturday 29th April, Swiss Cottage team attended a Community Health Event in Lismore Circus. The event consisted of a community health bus, diet advice, free health checks, live music and lots more.  Swiss Cottage Team members Shona, Concierge Supervisor and Shabaz, Assistant General Manager were in attendance to help promote Better Leisure Centres in Camden. The event was well attended by locals and residents of the Lismore Circus estate engaging in the variety of activities that ran throughout the afternoon. The team gave information around what the Better centres in Camden have to offer as well as giving out small goodie bags comprising of pens, drawstring bags, lanyards and stress balls which all proved to be popular! The team engaged with over 40 attendees and even got 3 membership sign-ups for Swiss Cottage at the event!