Interlopers’ Club Development Year 1 Report
We awarded a grant to Interlopers Orienteering Club last year to help fund a club development project (see award article) and reported on their progress after the first 6 months. Here we bring you an update at the end of year 1
Background
Supported by a grant award from the Orienteering Foundation, as well as the Scottish Orienteering Association, Interlopers Orienteering Club established a new part-time Club Development Officer (CDO) role in 2024. Katherine Ivory was appointed to the post for a period spanning June 2024 – March 2025, on a roughly one-day-a-week basis. Having a designated person enabled the club to plan and try some initiatives with a view to identifying what might be most useful to build on for the future.
The aim was to raise wider awareness of orienteering as a rewarding and inclusive sport, and encourage participation by both active adults and families. In particular, we wanted to test some hypotheses around things that might help attract newcomers, e.g.:
- Better publicity – social media, local posters and print media
- Tasters, at local community events and via outreach to specific groups
- Better branding and materials for newcomers would help engage – pop-up banners, A boards with informative posters, what-next flyers etc
- Ensuring a good range of introductory O courses at events, especially Red and White courses
- Outreach to the running community (already-active adults / families).
The project was scoped in three phases:
- lead-up to the Sprint World Orienteering Champs (WOC) held in Edinburgh in summer 2024 (Phase 1, June-July) ...
- ... and the aftermath of WOC (phase 2, August-December), given activation work planned by SOA and BOF linked to this
- third phase, January-April 2025, to continue work, consolidate learning to date and plan for a proposed second year of development activity.
What Did We Do?
Given the focus on raising wider awareness of orienteering for both active adults and families, outreach activities were geared to reaching groups and individuals in those demographics. Activities included creating new, more engaging marketing materials and a significant boosting to club publicity efforts, particularly on social media (especially Facebook, but also Instagram) - whilst not forgetting the power of the poster. Indeed, quite a few newcomers at the club’s Braidburn Valley Level D / come-and-try-it event in October said that they’d come having seen posters on park gates and local noticeboards.
In addition to regular social media posts, content was placed in What’s-On listings across Edinburgh and the Lothians, as well as articles in local magazines (e.g., the South Edinburgh Directory and Families Magazine). There was also work to engage with potential partner organisations in the city with interests around promoting physical activity, e.g., the South East Edinburgh Community Sports Hub, which then referred several youth organisations to the club for taster sessions (e.g., the Inch Park ‘Friday Fusion’ session).
Orienteering taster sessions were developed for specific groups, e.g., young people (several Cubs packs, and a local youth group) and also for community events (e.g., Braidburn Valley Park’s Tea in the Park, and several Family Festival events at Craigmillar Castle Park). A bag of stakes, mini kites and pin punches proved a very useful tool, with micro-O going down very well with kids at local events. These events provided good opportunities to chat with parents in a relaxed fun environment about orienteering and stimulate their interest. IT was useful to have free copies of local Permanent Course maps to hand out as well as ‘what next’ flyers to signpost to future local events. A key observation was that we really need to take orienteering to where people are already, rather than rely on them coming to find it. Particularly in Edinburgh, there is just too much else competing for leisure time. Furthermore, whilst people at community-event tasters enjoyed the activities, it’s a big step from cones / stakes games or mazes to doing actual orienteering courses which need more of a time commitment as well as encouragement around skills and confidence (‘I don’t want to get lost!’ was heard quite frequently).
Investing in reinvigorating our Permanent Orienteering Courses in Edinburgh proved incredibly valuable, as this meant we could easily offer some basic orienteering experiences, without having to set up kites. Grant funding was secured from the City of Edinburgh Council’s to cover materials (new wooden posts and markers) and also enable partnership work with Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspace Trust (www.elgt.org.uk). They undertook the practical installation work on our behalf and are now also supporting community engagement work to get people out enjoying exploring using the new course maps, as is another local organisation based next to the park, Bridgend Farmhouse.
With a view to raising awareness and interest amongst runners, three orienteering taster sessions were held linked to Parkruns (Holyrood Park, Vogrie and Oriam), at which the club staged Volunteer Takeovers with club members taking on roles such as marshalling and timekeeping. Short introductory courses were set up starting near the Parkrun finish, with Parkrunners (and anyone else interested) encouraged to have a go after their run as a fun and novel warm-down. Apart from Holyrood Park which unfortunately saw torrential rain for the duration of Parkrun, these tasters went down really well, with participants expressing interest in coming to future orienteering events, and we have seen some of them since.
What Did We Achieve?
This first year of experience has generated a lot of practical resource development and contacts as foundations for outreach and growth. We now have much better materials to use going forward, including the sets of POC courses, pop-up banners, taster-session templates and improved flyers and A board posters.
Sustained publicity work has delivered results in terms of the improved external visibility of our events (e.g., looking at Facebook engagement statistics), as well as wider interest in them. It has been really encouraging to have had good (and better-than-expected) turn-outs for club events (Kinneil Woods, Braidburn Valley, Vogrie, Colinton Dell, and Craigmillar Castle Park), with quite a few newcomers taking part as well as existing local club orienteers. Looking at club event data compared to previous years, there have been greater numbers of ‘Independent’ entries (including quite a few family entries) for lower technical-level courses (White, Yellow, Orange and Red), as well as greater numbers of existing orienteers from local clubs.
Attracting new members is likely to be a slow burn. The club has attracted one ‘newcomer’ member who has become quite active, but otherwise membership growth has been driven by existing orienteers looking for a new club (either on moving to Edinburgh, or having graduated from EUOC).
What Works?
Some key learning points included the following:
- Take orienteering to where people are – Tea in the Park, Family Forest Festivals, Cubs / Beavers meetings etc
- Make it a fun, welcoming, quality experience – have enough people around to actively help newcomers get going and follow up with them
- Keep it simple for activities, so they’re easily understandable for newcomers
- Link in groups for events – invite schools that might be interested (perhaps looking for training in advance of events such as the annual Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival in early June).
- People in running groups like to run in groups – so perhaps need to do more around promoting pairs as an entry option, or formats such as mass starts??
- Ensure engaging, goof quality newcomer materials – up to date posters, social media, websites with relatable images and clear signposting to future opportunities to enjoy orienteering
- Invest in social media and reaching new audiences by tagging, making relevant, building a relationship etc
- Keep trying with new products (e.g., Reds for runners – might be a slow burn until work starts to get round the target audience)
- Ensure signposting for follow up (the next steps people can take if interested – focus on future events, not club membership)
- Have an engaging shop window – if social media posts or other publicity is to drive people to a website, then invest in this so it whets their appetites to look further and participate in events.
What Next?
It is still very early days in our club development journey, with consolidation and further on-going work needed to build up the foundations for sustainable success. The club now has some of the necessary tools in place to support work, such as marketing collateral, materials for engaging newcomers, improved Permanent Orienteering Courses etc. However, there is more to do, for example, to develop the club website as a more engaging ‘shop front’ for newcomers, and also around engaging the wider club to build our volunteer capacity for outreach and supporting for newcomers, then also – vitally - ensuring positive experiences and progression for them within the club.
With the end of the Year 1 project and so resourcing to enable a specific CDO role, Interlopers club development work is now dependent on volunteer input (with Katherine continuing a number of things kickstarted by the project around marketing and outreach). Having a specific role to set up structured development programmes is invaluable, but it's essential that this is well supported by the wider club contributing volunteer time to support the planning and delivery of activities, to make development programmes sustainable. A major learning point from the experience so far is that Club Development is very much a team sport. The next step is around club dialogue to determine priorities now, develop the forwards strategy and identify resourcing, whether or not as a specific CDO, should further grant funding be secured.
Given our geography, collaboration with other local clubs for outreach is of course another important avenue to make the most of our collective resources. We have joined forces with both both ELO and ESOC for Parkrun tasters and there is scope to do much more. For example, there are opportunities to leverage from the jointly-run summer Sprintelope series to engage with adult runners who might be encouraged to move into orienteering. Another avenue to develop is around creating a sustainable basis for progression opportunities for families, e.g., through joint skills sessions.
A very big thank-you to our funders without whom this work would not have been able to happen: the Orienteering Foundation, Scottish Orienteering Association, and City of Edinburgh Council. And finally, to all the club volunteers who supported the development and delivery of the project over the past year.
More detail
You can see a more detailed report with graphics here.
KATHERINE IVORY
Interlopers Orienteering Club
4 June 2025