On Friday 15 October 2010 at North Notts Community Arena in Worksop, for the first time ever, an awards ceremony is being staged to recognise the excellent work being carried out across the district of Bassetlaw linked to increased levels of physical activity and improved health.

The Bassetlaw Sport & Physical Activity Partnership has been in existence for just over a year launching it’s 18-month Action Plan in September 2009. The partnership is made up of representatives from 17 different organisations.

Some key achievements made by the partnership in it’s first year of operation include: attracting the Race For Life event into Bassetlaw for the first time ever, launching the “Activate Bassetlaw” challenge, expanding the Exercise on Referral scheme across Bassetlaw, organising a wide range of different Change4Life School roadshow events aimed at families, developing a range of new activities for adults across the district, re-instating The Bassetlaw Walking Festival, organising a mass Dance in Town event in both Retford & Worksop Town Centres and ensuring the adiZone facility was secured for Bassetlaw and organising a launch event at The Canch Park in July 2010.

The Partnership now wants to celebrate the excellent work that is being conducted across Bassetlaw by various individuals, groups of people and organisations. Nominations for the Recognition Event came flooding in from various partnership members. A list of 28 different people / organisations have been finalised to receive an award for the work they do throughout the year encouraging Bassetlaw residents to be more physically active and linking their work to health improvements.

Each nominated person will receive a framed certificate of recognition from The Bassetlaw Sport & Physical Activity Partnership.

The evening itself will be a mixture of awards being presented that will be interspersed with some displays from various groups and the whole evening will be a celebration of what is excellent about Bassetlaw.

Tony Wright secretary of the partnership commented “ When the idea of staging an awards evening was first discussed, there was a feeling that it could not be organised this year in such a short space of time. But a small working group was established and they quickly developed the idea and with great enthusiasm have ensured that it will happen in 2010. The main reason for the event is to recognise people for the dedication and hard work they give towards creating opportunities for people in Bassetlaw to be physically active. It’s great to have this opportunity to celebrate all this excellent work and recognise so many different people.”