Celebrating Community Business – TAWS

17 May, 2019
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As part of Community Business Weekend 2019 we’re celebrating some of the amazing co-operatives that we have the pleasure of working with here at Co-operative Futures.

In our first blog of the weekend, we’d like to introduce you to The Active Wellbeing Society, or TAWS as they’re better known.

TAWS provide a huge range of services for the people of Birmingham, enabling them to get active within their communities.

Their mission is:

Using physical activity, guided by innovation, collaboration and insight to do the social knitting required to create stronger and more resilient communities.

And they achieve that by providing the following:

  • Active Parks offers free sports and activities in parks across the city, including running, zumba, tennis, basketball, canoeing, gardening and bushcraft.

  • Active Streets enables residents to close their streets to traffic and hold events to bring residents together.

  • Big Birmingham Bikes is an innovative scheme giving the residents of Birmingham access to bikes and cycle proficiency training, thus encouraging more people to cycle in and around the city.

  • The Be Active scheme provides access to Leisure and Wellbeing centres, allowing people access to swimming pools, group exercise classes and gym sessions.

TAWS originated from Birmingham City Council – they were originally the Wellbeing Service. However, due to cost cutting measures by the council, these services were withdrawn. TAWS therefore formed as a Community Benefit Society in 2017 to continue to deliver and expand on the programmes that had been established.

In the true spirit of co-operation, The Active Wellbeing Society collaborate with a wide range of partners to deliver the great work that they do in the city, including Sport England, British Cycling, Friction Arts, The Real Junk Food Project Brum and St Pauls Community Development Trust to name just a few.

So if you’re based in Birmingham and looking to get more physically active as well as getting more engaged with your local community, then you should take a look at all the activities on offer from TAWS!