parkrun project celebrating women and girls wins national industry award

A parkrun Australia project has been recognised with a major industry innovation award at this year’s National Sports and Physical Activity Convention in Melbourne.

The 12 month project, which was funded by the Australian Sports Commission, was designed to celebrate and promote parkrun participation amongst women and girls – including walking, running, volunteering and spectating.

Prior to parkrun events being paused in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic, more women and girls participated in parkrun compared with males, and they took part more often. However, when parkrun events re-opened, males began participating in greater numbers than women and girls.

parkrun Australia insight into the barriers and motivations identified by women and girls led to a project proposal that was submitted to the federal government, to design and build a website with downloadable resources to highlight the different types of parkrun participation, and to empower anyone in the country to promote parkrun participation within their own personal or professional circles.

The public-facing website, known as the parkrun Resources Hub, contains videos, photos, social media assets, template presentations and research that address common barriers that can prevent people from coming to parkrun for the first time, or coming back after a break. The strong emphasis on dynamic visual content was inspired by a key theme from parkrun’s insight, which was the notion of ‘I can be it if I can see it’.

Over a 12 month period, the content created for the parkrun Resources Hub was shared widely by parkrun event teams, local and national stakeholders, and individuals. During that time, each Australian state and territory recorded more women and girl first-time participants at parkrun compared with males, which reversed the trend of the previous 12 months. In the period July 2022-June 2023, more than 62,000 women and girls in Australia walked, ran or volunteered at parkrun for the first time.

First time walkers/runners/volunteers at Australian parkruns July 2022-June 2023

The Industry Innovation Awards recognise individuals, not-for-profits, commercial, play, recreation and sport sectors, on their innovations to get more people active in the community. parkrun Australia received the Communications and Marketing Award.

In accepting the award, parkrun Australia paid tribute to the hundreds of women and girl parkrunners around Australia who made the project possible.

The Resources Hub, which can be found here, will be used in the future to host downloadable parkrun resources across a wide range of projects and themes, such as volunteering.