The University of Worcester has developed a worldwide reputation for its pioneering work to promote inclusion and engagement in sport including disability sport.
In January this year the university was granted planning permission for the world’s first International Inclusive Cricket Centre, which is due to open in 2024.
The centre will provide a place where visually impaired and blind cricketers, physically disabled cricketers, deaf and those with a learning disability cricketers can play alongside female and male cricketers with no impairments at all levels of ability.
The ECB is extremely proud to be part of a partnership – involving University of Worcester, Lord’s Taverners and Worcestershire CCC amongst others – to bring this plan together and provide a facility that will provide a hub for our national disability teams and many more benefits to the local community.
Significantly, the project will benefit from the expertise of Worcester University to place inclusion and participation at the heart of everything it does to promote educational and sporting excellence.
University of Worcester Pro Vice Chancellor Partnerships, Mick Donovan, has written a blog to showcase how the university has developed its world-leading standards on inclusion and community engagement:
Throughout the 21st Century, we have worked hard at the University of Worcester to develop a ‘whole university’ approach to inclusion and community engagement.
Driven by a deep-seated commitment to educational opportunity and equality, and developed in successive Strategic Plans, it is an approach which is designed to ensure that every activity and facility of the University promotes inclusion and participation, whilst simultaneously contributing to educational excellence.
In 2013 we opened the University of Worcester Arena, the first indoor sports arena in the UK purpose-designed to accommodate wheelchair athletes. The Arena was one of just six facilities in England to be granted a Sport England Iconic Facilities grant, part of the London 2012 Paralympics legacy. It has since become a world-leading facility for wheelchair sport and set a new benchmark for inclusive sport facilities, exceeding legislative requirements in every respect.
The Arena is a powerful contributor to the development of inclusive sport at all levels - delivering training for athletes prior to major world events, workshops for special educational needs schools, and programmes for senior citizens who are re-engaging in exercise and sport.
It is that same drive and passion to create opportunities for all that is what now drives our ambitions to create the world’s first indoor cricket education centre, purpose-designed to include visually impaired cricketers and physically disabled cricketers, as well as encouraging engagement from female and male cricketers with no impairments at all levels of ability.
This innovative new Centre will form part of our new Health and Wellbeing Campus making a positive impact on the community we serve, in the same way as our other facilities. Along with Arena, The Hive, Europe’s first integrated university and public library, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in July, has been transformative for both the City and its residents.
In 2019, the then Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore MP, praised our approach to developing inclusive facilities, saying: “The University of Worcester, who have built their entire campus with accessibility in mind, are leading the way.”
It is this combination of inclusion and excellence, which has seen the University win a number of awards, including the Times Higher Education’s (THE) inaugural award for Outstanding Contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, a Guardian University Award in recognition of the international impact of our inclusive sport work, and shortlisted three times as University of the Year in the THE Awards.
The University’s inclusive approach has a profound and far-reaching impact on the lives of many, while reshaping and re-defining the modern university. We know that this new cricket centre will build further on this work.
The Centre will be an outstanding contributor to the development of all forms of cricket. The ECB’s national disability teams will centralise their programme to the Centre and will work with us in supporting all forms and levels of the game.
The Centre will also enable organisations such as the Lords Taverner’s to utilise much needed facilities to develop opportunities for young people and those with disabilities to engage in the game.