Friday, 10th of January 2020

Scottish Curling – Plans for Developing our Sport

In recent seasons it has become more challenging to retain and increase participation and membership in curling across the country. Scottish Curling, in conjunction with sportscotland, have concluded that change is required with our development plans to help us achieve our strategic targets for retention and growth by 2023. Following many meetings and discussions across the country, the following has been created to provide direction and focus to the development of our great sport.

A New Partnership Approach & Development Structure

Our new approach is to improve collaboration with every ice rink curling community in Scotland, building stronger relationships with members, volunteers and ice rink staff. We want to develop a better understanding of the unique situation of every ice rink community in Scotland, with joint development plans to improve membership retention and growth.

The current development structure has a mixture of arrangements for Development Officers (DO’s) which exist at just 36% of ice rinks and vary greatly between posts, in terms of hours of work and employment situation. We recognise the huge amount of excellent work that has been delivered locally by the Development Officers, and through this period of change we are seeking to work with partners to retain the great work being done at a local level.

The new structure will provide a more consistent level of support to all ice rink curling communities across the country, through three Development Managers and locally employed DO’s.  The new model would see the DO’s employed locally by one of the other partners and we are committed to supporting each of them as best we can to achieve the best outcomes.

We will recruit two new Development Manager posts to work alongside the existing Development Manager. These posts will be responsible for developing curling with around seven ice rink curling communities each, to increase participation and membership. In addition, they will have responsibility for appropriately selected national projects and programmes.

The two new posts are as follows:

• Development Manager – Central Scotland
• Development Manager – South West Scotland

The new posts will work closely with the current Development Manager, Iain Stewart, who will cover the East and North areas of Scotland, along with continuing to lead on some national projects.

Applications are now open for these new roles, follow this link for full job descriptions and how to apply.

Seven Point Plan – New Initiatives

The new partnership approach and development structure will greatly help us to encourage people from the age of 8 to 80 to play our great game. There is already a fantastic commitment to developing our sport, particularly the hard work that goes into junior curling, and there has been some great progress in developing coaches and officials, providing opportunities for those with disabilities, developing the performance pathway and organising curling camps and events.

This new approach will help us to work together to build on the good work and also focus more intensively on the following identified seven areas:

1. Conversion – Converting participation to membership from introductory programmes such as Curling’s Cool, Try Curling etc.
2. Secondary School – Targeted work at secondary schools close to Ice Rinks to improve the engagement rate of young people aged 11-18.
3. Retention of School Leavers – A specific focus to make it easier for junior curlers to continue their curling in new places during the major transition period of leaving school.
4. Targeted recruitment campaign for 50+ – A nationally driven marketing campaign, delivered at local rinks, to attract new people over the age of 50 to our sport.
5. An adapted version of Curling – Develop a new exciting more convenient version of the game to attract new people and retain those at risk of stopping due to busy lives.
6. Capitalise on high profile events – plan strategically to better engage with the increased media profile around major curling competitions such as Olympic/Paralympic Games and World Championships and ensure we are better prepared to provide welcoming environments that will hook people into curling.
7. Scottish Curling Membership – Review and improve how we demonstrate the value and benefits of the membership offering to our current members and make the membership journey as attractive and customer focused as possible.

The start of the new decade in 2020 is an exciting time to be involved in curling in Scotland with our new approach and plans. We are very fortunate to have so many passionate volunteers and staff involved in our sport and we look forward to working with you to get more people curling more often.

For more information please contact Nick Rennie – Head of Development – at nick@scottishcurling.org or 0131 333 3003.