Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme
Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme (LOCSP) was awarded a contract by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) to provide a venue for the Open House London and Youth in Design exhibition which attracts thousands of attendees each year.
The LOCSP, a leading community based UK charity, was founded in 1989 by Leyton Orient Football Club and the London Borough of Waltham Forest in order to provide opportunities for local young people to engage with sport. Twenty years later they provide over 200,000 activities across London every year, helping young people to confront difficult issues including racism, sexism, lack of cultural awareness, crime, unemployment, lack of education and training and ageism.
Being based in an Olympic Host Borough, LOCSP was keen to take advantage of the 2012 Games on their doorstep both as a means to inspire young people and as a genuine commercial opportunity. To this end they registered on London 2012’s business opportunities portal, CompeteFor, as part of their ongoing engagement with the ODA.
Neil Brown, LOCSP Operations Manager, says ‘CompeteFor has been a great tool for us. While we found the original registration process quite lengthy, we only had to do it once and the number of times we have subsequently used CompeteFor to tender for projects has completely justified the initial time spent. There are also more buyers than just the ODA and LOCOG so we frequently search the site just to see what’s out there.’
“While we found the original registration process quite lengthy, we only had to do it once and the number of times we have subsequently used CompeteFor to tender for projects has completely justified the initial time spent”
LOCSP was notified of the opportunity by the ODA and applied through CompeteFor. They were subsequently awarded the contract to provide a staging venue for Olympic Park tours for the public as part of the Open House London weekend. They also provided two indoor sports arenas for a youth design exhibition and community halls for use as a theatre and cafe. In the end, nearly 4,000 visitors attended the event over the course of the weekend.
‘We were always keen to make sure we made the most of London hosting the 2012 Games,’ Neil explains, ‘and so far we’ve been quite successful. The contract we were awarded was not only a big commercial boost, it also provided a great exposure to other opportunities, as a number organisations involved have since gone on to book our venues as well.’
