This week began by visiting the Orchard Meadow Primary School in Blackbird Leys with my research group. We met with the headteacher who spoke to us about the school and how beneficial they found the sports programme that our groups is researching on students’ wellbeing and the desire to have this programme occur more often. We were able to tour the primary school and saw the different facilities and initiatives that the school had in place to support their students and their different needs. We directly spoke to a teacher who oversaw the Oxford pilot study and saw an improvement in students’ engagement especially in those who often do not enjoy PE. The students were able to build their collaboration and confidence skills. However, the teacher noted that the students wished that the programme had been longer. This was my first introduction to the Blackbird Leys area and was able to learn more about Oxford outside of the university and see how rare it was for children living in Oxford to be exposed to the university and aspire to study at the University and this really showed me how immense Town vs Gown divide is.

Throughout this week, we worked on a stakeholder map which displayed who would be affected by our research and the interest that they would have on them. We identified core, direct and indirect stakeholders which included students, parents, teachers, school trusts, Department of Education and more. We also noted stakeholders which may have competing priorities and how the different stakeholders may relate to each other. I think in this part of our project, we could try to engage more with the stakeholders and understand more about their interests in our research programme, especially indirect stakeholders, although there are constraints with our research project focus.

We were also given the opportunity to gain a new research skill which will be beneficial in our project – referencing. We were introduced to Zotero and how to use the application efficiently. We also began the process of making our Literature Review which for our project focus will be mainly focused on the quantitative data collected. Later, we joined other Laidlaw Scholars from other universities like MIT, Columbia and had a team-building evening at Junkyard Golf, which I found very fun and was able to have fun and connect with new people and destress from the work we had been doing this week.

To conclude the week, we met at the Iffley Road Sport Centre for the Powerhouse Games from the Power2Inspire. Power2Inspire is a charity which is focused on producing Inclusive Sports Events which are fun for everyone. The Powerhouse Games focuses on leaving no one on the bench, which holds various multiple games which are adapted so everyone is able to play the games and have fun. As Laidlaw Scholars, we supported teams from various schools who were in Year 8. It was great to see their competitiveness as well as their collaboration to win the games together. My favourite game to play was Goalball, a sport which was designed for athletes with vision impairment, where we gave instructions to our blindfolded teammates and guide whilst they played the game.

After we toured Blackbird Leys with Natty Mark, a well-known person within the Blackbird Leys area, who showed us the many community initiatives in the area including Communi-tea Cafe, RAW Workshop, Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground (BLAP) and Leys Community Development Initiative (CDI) and many more. (I especially enjoyed our lunch at the Communi-tea Cafe). All these community focused initiatives showed how determined Blackbird Leys is to support the people who live here as well as making sure that no one is left out. I really enjoyed this tour as it showed me the different community engagement programmes that have been implemented in Blackbird Leys and the positive impact it is having on people.