The first partnership meeting for the project “SPAcE – Supporting Policy and Action for Active Environments” was held on 23rd and 24th March 2015 in Cheltenham, UK.

SPAcE is an exciting new three year project co-funded by the Sport: Collaborative Partnerships action of the Erasmus+ Programme. The project will link together 10 project partners from 8 different EU countries to achieve the objective of developing sustainable active urban environments in cities and towns across the EU. Partners include: University of Gloucestershire (UK – Coordinator), University of Oxford (UK), University of Thessaly (Greece), University of Zurich (Switzerland), LIKES Foundation for Sport and Health Science (Finland), Castilla La Mancha Regional Government of Education (Spain), Tukums Municipality (Latvia), Brasov Metropolitan Agency (Romania) and the Municipality of Trikala (Greece).

During the first partnership meeting, representatives from each partner organisation met to plan the implementation of the project. The partnership shared information from 8 different countries about policies that influence how the environment supports physical activity, good practices in supporting active urban environments and presented places where it is good and difficult to be active to support the integration of project results into policy across the EU.

The overall aim of the SPAcE project is to make the healthy choice the easy choice through creating healthy urban environments. In doing so, SPAcE aims to increase the physical activity level of the communities involved in the project, and support and encourage social inclusion through more active participation.

The project will stimulate enhanced participation in physical activity through the development of UActivE Action Plans in five implementation sites (cities/towns) in the EU (Greece (MT), Italy, Latvia, Romania and Spain). Working groups will be established in these five sites where the UActivE Action Plans will be developed and key personnel will be trained in the use of the “WHO/Europe Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT)”. Implementation partners will be supported from the partners who are not implementation sites (UK, Finland, Greece (UOT) and Switzerland) who are experienced experts in European and national physical activity policy, practice, implementation and evaluation in developing physically active environments, and are also academic subject experts in national physical activity development and evaluation.

The project will develop 3 outputs:

• EU UActivE Summary of Evidence and Good Practice document;
• Guidance document ‘How to Create and Evaluate a UActivE’ including case studies x5 from project partners;
• ‘How to’ guidance on measuring value of an UActivE including a complementary media clip.

The first phase of the project is dedicated to the planning, preparing and delivery of the Learning and Sharing of Good Practice Symposium and Workshop where all partners will attend following the scoping exercise of evidence and good practice. The desk based scoping exercise of evidence and good practice will involve the sharing of current good (evidenced based) practice from across the EU of implementation and promotion of an Urban Active Environment. This will lead to the creation of the first project output – the EU UActivE Summary of Evidence and Good Practice document.

The next partnership meeting and the Learning and Sharing of Good Practice Symposium and Workshop will be held in Palermo hosted by CESIE, on 5th and 6th November.

For further information about the SPAcE project, please contact: rosina.ndukwe@cesie.org.