Community in motion.
Helping communities build active places.
Activity First is a CIC that helps communities to create places for self-organised activity - such as Skateparks, pump tracks, and mixed-use activity parks.
We provide tools and guidance to inspire and amplify local voices - empowering you to create projects, build campaigns and drive transformational change in your area.
Whether you’re looking to set up a local skate club, get a pump-track built, or fund a multi-million-pound activity park, we can help make it happen.
Communities
We support local campaigners in transforming their ideas into built reality.
Through clear guidance, fund raising expertise, and advocacy, we help communities to build successful campaigns - and shape places for movement, creativity, and social life.
Who we work with
Who we work with
Who we work with
Councils
We collaborate with councils to support initiatives for activity, helping them to create well-designed skateparks and active places that strengthen the public realm.
Turning local ambition into enduring, inclusive infrastructure that promotes community connection.
Developers
We work with developers to integrate active, inclusive spaces into the fabric of new developments.
By combining design insight with community engagement, we help create places that encourage activity and enhance wellbeing.
What is self-organised activity?
Self-organised activity is any form of physical movement initiated, led, and shaped by the people doing it - not by coaches, clubs, or structured programmes. Skating and riding are prime examples.
It’s spontaneous, informal, social, and deeply creative. It reflects how people - especially young people - naturally choose to be active when given the freedom, space, and confidence to do so.
We can help you to campaign and raise funds towards a safe space for young people to be active and social in your community.
What is self-organised activity?
Self-organised activity is any form of physical movement initiated, led, and shaped by the people doing it - not by coaches, clubs, or structured programmes. Skating and riding are prime examples.
It’s spontaneous, informal, social, and deeply creative. It reflects how people - especially young people - naturally choose to be active when given the freedom, space, and confidence to do so.
We can help you to campaign and raise funds towards a safe space for young people to be active and social in your community.
Organised sports aren't for everyone.
Environments like Skateparks and Activity Parks support self-directed activity, building lifelong habits of movement and wellbeing.
More than just a place to ride - Skateparks are places where people of all ages, backgrounds, and identities come together.
OUR SERVICES
How We Can Help
Activity is a powerful driver of health, wellbeing and social value - namely the outcomes that funders are looking for when they back community initiatives. Framing your project as something that will deliver these outcomes sets you off on the right foot.
Our role is to advocate for your interests, giving councils the evidence and impact they need to get behind your project. We’ve presented to hundreds of groups, developing a passionate pitch that promotes the unique value of self-organised activity in building healthier communities – something every council, funder and community values.
We can help you write a compelling mission statement, find broad representation, get constituted, and create a legal entity that won’t hold you back.
We can help you to find the funds that are best suited to your project, align your vision with their criteria, and help you to write compelling applications.
We all need a little inspiration. Our team have travelled the world to find the most progressive public realm - the type of places that inspire a community into action.
Many projects can stall at the first hurdle, often in the communities that need these solutions the most. We can advise on how to take those first, crucial steps, building a solid foundation that won’t limit your aspirations down the line, ultimately mapping a route to success.
We analyse a pre-determined criteria covering geography, IMD score, track record, and resources in place to determine the scale and type of project best suited to you, who is most likely to fund it, and how to make it happen. Get in touch to find out about fundraising in your area.
We can evaluate the social value of your park, physical life left in the equipment, gaps in provisions - and recommend next steps in a written report. Often the assets required for a mixed-use activity park already exist - we can advise on how to activate them as part of an inclusive masterplan.
For Councils looking at long-term investment across their city, town, district or borough, we can undertake or contribute to a detailed amenities strategy that will help you to invest in the right provisions, in the right places, driven by local voices.
We can help you to run a balanced consultation process that will resonate with funders and councils.
Whilst it can be tempting to talk solely with the ‘scene-leaders’, potential and emerging participants can help you understand the barriers that might limit wider engagement in healthy activity.
We help you find and amplify local voices, setup and run a slick, compelling campaign before capturing and interpreting the data into persuasive reports.
Many community groups are required to pay VAT, losing money that could be contributed to the project.
Some communities end up wasting valuable resource setting up constituted groups with bank accounts when they didn’t have to. Activity First can hold your funds, under a memorandum of agreement, ensuring you do not incur VAT.
With no single template or set of guidelines in place for the procurement of skate & activity parks, we see a disparity in the quality of briefs and end-products.
We can advise on known pitfalls, supply good examples or write one for you. Our team have read and responded to hundreds of tenders.
Community in motion.
Why do we exist?
Self-organised activity has been undervalued and underinvested in for decades, leading to:
An uneven distribution of facilities across the UK
Low participation rates in physical activity
Worsening physical and mental health, especially in underserved communities
The places that do exist are often poor in quality, in the wrong locations, disconnected from other amenities, or designed without input from the people who would benefit most.
We exist to reverse these trends - helping you to create places that reflect community ambitions and identity - and encourage people to get active on their own terms.
“Self-organised Activity is done for its own sake, the experience itself is the reward - not the outcome, status, or external result”