Sports activity across urban spaces

Abstract
The project proposed has the aim to improve and develop instruments for promoting sports practice through
urban spaces.
Sports practice is an important human activity, that naturally gives a lot of benefits to people usually
involved, for example:

• healthy lifestyle,
• physical wellness,
• psychological wellness,
• improvement of relationships with other people,
• improvement of knowledge of own limits and qualities,
• improvement of human skills.

So, creating occasions of making sports for the most number of people in the different contexts should be an objective for institutions at all levels to improve policies for promoting sports practice to people and creating occasions for free accessibility to sports activities. Basing on these elements, there are people and organisations that in this historical moments are promoting the concept of the right to making sports, especially focused on children and young people. The biggest obstacles on this path are basically connected to possibilities to practice sport activities freely in many contexts, especially in urban areas. In fact, in many cities and urban areas its very difficult for people, in particular young people, to have places in which practising sports activities and when sports spaces exists, most of times people have to pay for the access, because, except in some countries, there are no instruments for guaranteeing the right to practice sports freely. So, the initiative of people, non-profit organisations, sports clubs, etc…is fundamental for improving methods, best practices, and innovative instruments in this field of action. Moreover the action of these entities could have the power to stimulate institutions in improving and innovating their policies for changing situations. But, for making these power real, it is important create networks and connection between organisations involved, sharing instruments, creating common table of practices and acquiring efficient methods from countries in which policies about the field are more advanced. KRAP wants to carry out a project in this field of action because is naturally committed to that scopes. In fact, KRAP has a specific backgrounds on sports like Parkour, BMX, Skateboarding and in general free style sports. All these discipline has a particular character: was born from the streets and live for being practiced inside the streets. So, spreading value and principle of that sports, KRAP naturally works on trying new ways for practicing sports inside cities and urban spaces. Also, these kind of sports are really innovative in that sense, because they go over the necessity to have a specific pitch or spaces dedicated: every where could be a playground for that sports. So, through its experience, in collaboration with selected partners, KRAP wants to carry out a project in which through practices of sharing, networking and non formal learning, will be possible to create a common table of instruments aimed to improve practices for accessibility to sports activities in urban contexts, and in particular:

• how to spread best values of doing sports in daily life,
• how to create occasions of sports practices in urban contexts,
• how to use urban spaces for sports practices,
• how to stimulate and press on public institutions about improving active policies for accessibility to sports activities,
• how to propose to public institutions to support actions carried out by associations, sports clubs, non-profit organisations committed in the field. In this way the theme of the project meets perfectly aim and scopes of participating organisations, that are all involved in programmes and projects that promotes sports practice and in educational activities through sports.

Coordinator:
Krap ASD (Italy)
Partners:
Asociatia Tinerilor cu Initiativa Civica A.T.I.C. (Romania)
Urbana Mladez (Croatia)
Asociación Multideportiva Euexia (Spain)
Association for progress, education and lobbying PEL Skopje (Former Republic of Macedonia)