Over the last decade, sport and physical activity have become increasingly recognised and implemented as tools to foster social cohesion in neighbourhoods, cities and communities around Europe. As a result, numerous programmes have emerged that attempt to enhance social cohesion through a variety of sport-based approaches (Moustakas, Sanders, Schlenker, & Robrade, 2021; Svensson & Woods, 2017). However, despite this boom in sport and social cohesion, current definitions and understandings of social cohesion rarely take into account the needs, expectations or views of practitioners, stakeholders and, especially, participants on the ground (Raw, Sherry, & Rowe, 2021). Yet, to truly foster broad social outcomes like social cohesion, there is increasing recognition that programmes must move beyond interventions that only focus on the individual level, and instead find ways to work with and engage a wide array of stakeholders and organisations (Hartmann & Kwauk, 2011; Moustakas, 2022). In turn, this allows programmes to respond to community needs, foster engagement, deliver more sustainable outcomes, and work at both the individual and institutional levels. The Living Lab concept - which is distinguished by multi-stakeholder involvement, user engagement, innovation and co-creation within a real-life setting - provides an innovative approach to help achieve these goals. More formally, Living Labs have been defined as “user-centred, open innovation ecosystems based on a systematic user co-creation approach, integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities and settings” (European Network of Living Labs, 2021). Thus, this can be a powerful approach to engage a wide array of stakeholders, and create interventions that are responsive to community needs. As such, the Sport for Social Cohesion Lab (SSCL) project was conceived to implement a Living Lab approach within five sport for social cohesion programmes in four different European countries. This approach was chosen to help programmes directly engage programme participants, generate understanding of the elements that promote social cohesion in a sport setting and to co-create activities and tools to explore, support and understand social cohesion within these communities. The following toolkit reflects our multi-national experiences designing and implementing Living Labs across these various contexts. Our partners represent a variety of settings, from schools to community-based organisations, and together these experiences can provide valuable insights to other sport (and non-sport) organisations wishing to implement a Living Lab approach within their contexts and programmes. Thus, practitioners and implementers of community-based programmes should be understood as the immediate target group of this toolkit, though the insights and reflections included here can be of relevance for any individual or organisation seeking to use more participatory approaches within their work. In particular, in the coming sections, this toolkit will define the Living Lab concept more precisely, suggest some steps to launch a Living Lab, and offer insights on how to implement the different components of a Living Lab.
According to the resource dependence theory, organisations draw upon interorganisational relationships to address the need for additional resources. The purpose of this study was to analyse whether sport clubs with serious resource problems regarding members, human resources (volunteers and coaches), infrastructure resources (sport facilities), or financial resources would be more likely to have a relationship with another non-profit sport club, a school, or a commercial sport provider. As previous research on interorganisational relationships has been mainly based on qualitative approaches, this study used quantitative data from sport club surveys in two Western European countries, Germany and Belgium (Flanders). The results of the correlation analyses showed that sport clubs in both countries experiencing serious problems regarding the availability of sport facilities were significantly more likely to have relationships with a school or a commercial sport provider. The study provided quantitative evidence that serious resource problems are correlated with interorganisational relationships.
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In recent years, the subsidiarity principle has been underlined in Sport-for-All policies in countries such as Germany, Austria and Belgium. According to this organising principle, issues need to be handled by the lowest possible political and administrative level, and as close to the citizens as possible. The 2007 decree concerning Sport-for-All policies at the local level in Flanders (Belgium) clearly referred to this. It emphasised the decentralisation of the Sport for All policy, and highlighted the regulatory and coordinating role of local sports authorities. As a consequence, they may face conflicting roles of being coordinator, regulator and provider of mass sport at the local level. In this paper, a mixed-method approach is used to give a closer insight in the role perceptions of local sports authorities in Flanders, and their position towards private sport providers. The results show that local sports authorities consider the coordination and regulation of mass sport in their municipality as their primary task. Yet, it appears that private sport providers also perceive competition from local sports authorities. Moreover, a considerable number of the local sports authorities believe they can combine the roles of provider and coordinator. As there appears to be considerable goal ambiguity, it is necessary for local sports authorities to formulate clear goals. Referring to the principle of subsidiarity, it is argued that sports authorities should only intervene when (non-)profit sport providers are not able to achieve the desirable outcomes with regard to sport and the welfare agenda.
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