Placing community at the heart of community sport development: introducing the community sport development framework (CSDF)

Abstract

It is widely accepted that the primary purpose of community sport development (CSD) is to increase participation rates in sport and build capacity to facilitate sporting opportunities. However, in England, Government funding for community sport has often been legitimised on the basis that it can also address a range of broader policy concerns. Despite this, there remains a lack of clarity regarding the precise boundaries of CSD, which has led to a variety of frameworks being presented to conceptualise and illustrate how CSD delivery might best occur. The aim of this paper is to reconceptualise CSD by proposing a model that places community at the heart of efforts to utilise sport to address wider social concerns. Our aim is to highlight the social, political, and economic interconnections that impact contemporary CSD work, and to underline the importance of maintaining a central focus on communities as the basis for CSD.