Sporting Heritage Conference '26

From the Shadows to Belonging

Using Heritage and Movement to Engage Those Often Excluded from Sport

Presented at the Sporting Heritage Conference 2026, this talk explores the intersection between sporting heritage, movement and belonging.

Drawing on museum and community practice, previous archaeological research and more than a decade of experience in the fitness sector, the presentation asks how heritage can create alternative routes into movement for people who may not identify with traditional sport or fitness spaces.

The talk also draws on earlier practice including Moor Flow at the National Waterways Museum, where movement became another way of encountering and interpreting heritage rather than a separate activity layered onto it.

What this talk explores:

Who gets to feel that sport and movement are for them?

Can heritage provide a different threshold into participation?

What changes when movement is understood through sensory experience, place, memory and connection rather than performance?

How can embodied approaches create conditions for participation and belonging?

This presentation builds on earlier research into bodies, interpretation and exclusion, bringing those questions into sporting heritage and movement practice.

Thursday 19 November 2026, 10.15am