The Championships were again celebrated for their work driving awareness and highlighting the importance to equality, diversity and inclusion through the vehicle of the world’s biggest cycling event.
On Thursday evening, 16 November, the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships (Cycling Worlds) secured the prestigious Access All Areas Diversity and Inclusion Award, that took place at London’s EartH (Evolutionary Arts Hackney).
Access All Areas has acted as the voice of the event industry, having run for over 20 years, Access All Areas magazine covers outdoor and live events and is read by thousands of event professionals.
Delivering a first event of its kind enables the creation of a blueprint for the future editions, not only just for the event but for those organisations involved in the delivery. The Cycling Worlds team was able to create as well as build on exiting tools to deliver an inclusive approach which can now be applied to future events in Scotland and across the UK. To achieve success, it must be applied with the right level of commitment, planning and resources.
The Cycling Worlds team showed huge commitment to designing an event that will contribute to a sustainable, inclusive future for cycling in Scotland with key highlights being the full integration para-road and para-track cycling World Championships into the competition schedule and the Elite Women’s Road Race bringing the curtain down on the event after 11 days of exhilarating action.
An Equality, Diversity and Inclusion framework was developed to guide event planning to ensure this event could be for everyone. The Championships were a once in a lifetime opportunity for Glasgow and Scotland to bring together people from all walks of life around one common goal – the power of the bike and removing all barriers for attendance.
Alongside the framework, key to this commitment was the development of the EDI Pledge, with the aim to maximise the platform of a global event that pledged inclusion at its core to deliver a world class event that embodies the spirit of community, belonging and equal respect.
Our partner, Scottish Cycling were proactive in ensuring that their activation programmes around the event targeted women and girls and saw impressive results with participation levels.
In total £1.5m was awarded through the Cycling Communities Fund and as part of that criteria was to ask awarded organisations to reach out to new audiences and create new opportunities for cycling for people who have been traditionally marginalized from cycling; reaching women and girls, adaptive bike cyclists, and people from minority ethnic communities.
The Championships worked with each of its event delivery partners and venues across Scotland to deliver inclusive and sustainable actions from the framework that met local community and environmental needs. Each of these venues was able to tell their own successful EDI story and be proud of their achievements at a local, national and international level.
Trudy Lindblade, CEO of the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships said:
“The team at the Cycling World Championships is proud to have again been recognised for the efforts by positioning equality, diversity and inclusion at the beating heart of the inaugural Championships and the positive impacts it has had.
Thanks must go to all our Host Partners and stakeholders who joined us in signing the Pledge and who continue to proactively embed equality, diversity and inclusion into all aspects of their organisations now and in the future. It really does demonstrate the power of the bike. These awards are truly a shared achievement”.
Fraser Johnston, Head of Development (Clubs and Coaching) of Scottish Cycling said:
“This further award continues to cement the reputation that the Championships has rightly earned as a catalyst for change, taking a ground breaking approach to embed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across the event. Scottish Cycling will continue to build upon this through our new strategy, Developing a Nation of Cyclists 2.0, which sets out our ambitions to grow and diversify the cycling community across Scotland“
Aneela McKenna, Mòr Diversity and EDI Advisor for the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships said:
“This award recognise the ambitions of ensuring that this inaugural event was inclusive in its delivery with opportunities for local communities to take part and get involved. We were committed to making a difference through the power of the bike and we hope the work done at the Cycling Worlds is a springboard for future best practice at major sporting events.”
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