The Netherlands came late to 19th-century industrial revolution but when modernization occurred, it prompted an almost feverish cultural and social 'Anglomania'. Elite youngsters enthusiastically appropriated sports such as cricket and football, which were introduced and promoted by English native speaker teachers at boarding and private schools, and by anglophile teachers and pupils at municipal institutes of secundary education. As a contribution to the study of this process of 'sportfication', this article provides evidence of how at the Noorthey elite Protestant private school physical and mental training not only went hand in hand, but that social, educational and age differences and boundaries between pupils and teachers fell away. By utilizing action photo's and visual archive sources this paper demonstrates that, in addition to research based on texts and numbers, images can be a highly valuable source in sport history research, utterly worthy of critical commentary and independent interpretation.
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This text is structured as follows. Section 1 concerns the background to this public lecture: the fact that social participation is becoming increasingly important in our society. This is evident, for example, from the way we are evolving from a protective welfare state into an activational, participative society. This development has consequences for the social sector and therefore also for the professionals who work in it. Social work professionals are not necessarily expected to identify or solve participation problems; they are seen as intermediaries who enable citizens to take responsibility themselves. Social work professionals are therefore expected to provide the individual applicant with less direct support and to focus more on strengthening the social networks of people and the social contexts in which they find themselves. Section 2 connects sections 1 and 3, but may also be read independently. It is about the fact that social work professionals are not yet in the habit of providing systematic insight into the results of their actions, while policy makers, for example, are increasingly looking to them precisely for this. First of all, I set out the reasons why it is so important to make the products of their interventions more visible, not only to policy makers, but also to social work professionals themselves and to the customers/citizens who depend on them. Secondly, I set out how the results of social interventions can be made more visible than they are at present; and what research can contribute. In this, I advocate a change in thinking: from thinking in terms of the evidence to thinking in terms of the evident. This argument forms the basis of the type of research that is being taken up from within the research group. In section 3, I describe a number of research projects that will be conducted during my tenure. I also set out the main proposition of this address, which states that social work professionals should do more with the knowledge that peoples behaviour is determined to a significant degree by contexts. In particular, social contexts could play a bigger role in promoting citizen participation. At present, social work professionals normally intervene directly in peoples behaviour, such as with therapies for combating problem behaviour. Interventions in a broader, social, context are rare. Why is this? And couldnt citizen participation be more effectively promoted by these means than through direct behavioural interventions? I put forward four propositions in this regard, and explain each of them in reference to one of the current research projects within the research group. With this, in combination with the general outlines of the research presented in section 2, I hope to provide a clear and inspiring overview of the research that will be carried out within the research group in the coming years. Finally, in section 4, I will discuss the significance of the research group to the faculty of Society and Law at Hogeschool Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, and to parties outside of Hogeschool Utrecht University of Applied Sciences.
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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.
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