Q&A with London Sport Awards judge Viveen Taylor

Nominations for the London Sport Awards, in association with the City of London Corporation, are open with submissions coming in from partners and the wider sector throughout London.

The deadline to nominate your organisation, or to put forward that incredible individual or partner organisation, is Thursday 15 July at which point our Awards judges face some tricky decisions.

Viveen Taylor is Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Sport England where she ensures everyone enjoy the benefits of physical activity regardless of background, is one of our judges.

We spoke to Viveen to learn how diversity, equality and inclusion is part of all London Sport Awards categories and why she’s particularly excited to see nominations for The Uniting London Award.

How powerful do you think sport can be in changing the lives of individuals?

We all know the benefits of physical activity and sport and how it can change people’s lives and when it has come from the grassroots where people are local and it is impacting very locally, it’s fantastic.

Sport and physical activity is an opportunity to change lives. It creates opportunities to travel, meet new people and experience new things and bring things back to your community.

It is also means that you become a role model for your locality, for people that know you, for your family and friends and that engagement from the workforce to engage local people is so important.

What is the Uniting London Award?

The Uniting London Award is a really important award, because it not only celebrates equality, diversity and inclusion, but it also celebrates and highlights all of the wonderful things that sport can give in terms of creating change, changing people’s lives.

We all know the benefits of sport and physical activity on wellbeing and health. I think celebrating that in terms of all the work that’s being done out there is going to be great for Londoners but also for wider learning and sharing as well.

All London Sport Awards categories want to see how equality, diversity and inclusion throughout the nomination, why is that?

It’s really important to recognise equality, diversity and inclusion in sport, particularly for sport for development. We live in a world which is often not fair, there is lots of things that are unequal and there is lots of inequalities.

We’ve had covid-19 and lots of challenging events that have highlighted the disproportionate impact on some communities.

Equality and inclusion is part of the whole diversity aspect which is really important in getting people engaged and feeling good about themselves and using sport and sport for development as a tool to do that is crucial.

We can learn so much from the wider society as well.

To submit your nomination for the London Sport Awards, click here.