Project Summary
Located in the Almaguin Highlands Region in the District of Parry Sound, Powassan is a rural municipality of approximately 3,400 residents. For this research, we engaged in a participatory action research (PAR) project with the Municipality of Powassan Recreation Committee. The focus of the research was about improving access to sport and recreation opportunities for residents of the municipality as well improving management and policy making in the recreation sector. We centred on three areas in the community: the attraction and retention of people, community development, and unstructured and land-based activities. Action initiatives involved developing a summer day camp and equipment loan programs as well as developing policies to support these programs. Further, we developed a strategic planning process (based on the National Framework for Recreation) which was intended to engage community members and improve the transparency of policy making activities. As such, this project provides insights into the complexities of managing sport and recreation in rural contexts. In particular, this work highlights the tensions which emerged around representation in local policy making and well as the implications of space and land-based sport and recreation in municipal policy making.
Research methods
PAR involves the engagement of people affected by research in the research process in order to understand the key issues involved in this situation, and foster transformative action or social change in the process. As such, committee members were engaged in various stages of the research, such as identifying their priority areas of interest, recruiting participants, as well as collecting and analyzing data. Formal data sources included (policy) document analysis, interviews (conducted with a variety of residents), and observations (of a variety of sport, recreation, and leisure time activities in the municipality). Simultaneously, we worked collaboratively with community organizers on a variety of sport and recreation programs, management, and policy making practices (e.g, strategic planning, policy development, and capacity building). Throughout the project, the research team engaged in reflective journaling in order to record and discuss the tensions that arose around community partnership, academic and community expectations, and roles of participants as researchers and agents of change in the community.
Research results
Results from this project highlighted the importance of contextual factors which influence both the processes and outcomes of sport and recreation in and for residents of the municipality. In this case, the community was characterized as a small rural setting, located within commuting distance to a larger centre, having recently experienced amalgamation (of three former jurisdictions), but also having a strong culture of volunteering and support for local sport and recreation.
The issues explored in the results included the attraction and retention of people to the community (e.g., temporary visitors as well as permanent residents), how sport and recreation is involved in community development (e.g., developing a sense of identity or membership particularly after amalgamation), as well as unstructured and land-based activities (e.g., hunting and fishing particularly for youths in the community). Findings highlighted issues around representation in local policy making, such as which groups in the municipality are involved in policy making as well as which sport and recreation activities receive the most (financial and political) support. Further, findings also demonstrated the breadth of activities which are considered in sport and recreation management (e.g., local festivals, unstructured free play, and environmental education initiatives) through which tensions arose when policy and funding structures are based on principles of athlete development (e.g., physical literacy and coach education).
Action initiatives took place simultaneously with formal research activities and served to enrich these findings by allowing for detailed observations of the social, cultural, and political context of local sport and recreation management. The action initiatives undertaken involved accessing funding through the Ontario Sport and Recreation Communities fund in order to develop a summer day camp program. The equipment purchased for this program was also made publicly available for residents to loan and use in their own leisure time. These initiatives were accompanied by policy making activities including an equipment loan policy and the development of a strategic planning process intended to engage residents and increase the transparency of sport and recreation policy making in Powassan.
Policy implications
This research provides important insights into the complexities of managing sport and recreation in rural contexts. Notably, the project highlights the ways that current policies and their underlying principles (e.g., Canadian Sport Policy, the National Framework for Recreation, long term athlete development, physical literacy, etc.) do and do not align with goals and objectives of community level organizers. Further, this project demonstrates the ways in which an increasingly professional and technocratic policy system may prevent organizers in rural contexts from accessing resources provided through the system. In particular, community organizers often lack the knowledge to engage with policy systems, particularly when community level goals do not align coherently within the goals and objectives identified in policies. Finally, through this project it was noted that sport, recreation, and other leisure time activities (e.g., land-based food procurement) are not neatly separated at the community level and therefore difficult to conceptualize with regard to technocratic policy systems.
Next steps
Firstly, many questions surfaced around capacity and readiness for change in rural sport and recreation organizations. In particular, there is a need to understand how community organizations can be supported to operate within diverse (and often changing) rural contexts. Further, as rural municipalities experience fluctuating economies, youth outmigration, aging populations, and (often) surpluses of aging sport and recreation infrastructure, there is a need to understand how community organizers and municipal officials can make decisions which are informed by the needs of residents as well as realistic understandings of what is feasible in their municipalities. While management and policy making may rely on a rhetoric of tradition, this may not sufficient in the contexts of changing rural municipalities and increasingly professional and technocratic sport and recreation systems.
Key stakeholders and benefits
Findings from this research may be beneficial for policy makers at many levels (National, Provincial, and Municipal) who are interested in understanding the complexities of managing sport and recreation in rural contexts. For example, when developing sport resources (e.g., National Coaching Certification Programming, Sport and Recreation Development Funding Structures), developers and policy makers should consider how accessible or relevant the resource will be in the context of a community with no elite sport programming. Further, it is important to consider the knowledge and skills required to read, understand, access, and engage with program applications and resources produced. In particular, National and Provincial sport organizations might consider how they are able to support community recreational sport organizations with few (or no) participants interested in moving into excellence stream of the sport for life continuum.