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Sporting Memories Network (SMN) began with a simple notion – could a love of sport transcend the ravages of dementia? Could isolation among older people be tackled by using sport as the focus for reminiscence–based activities? The answer is a resounding yes. In two-and-a-half years, SMN has established more than 80 groups for older people, with a further 75 planned for the coming year, in sports clubs, libraries, care homes, NHS wards and sheltered accommodation. The network has developed specialised training and manuals for staff and volunteers as well as a sporting memories website with more than 3,000 stories from sports stars, sports fans and group participants to help trigger memories and conversation.
Today, we celebrate SMN's achievements along with the fizz and vibrancy of 49 other radicals whose work ranges from food to finance to technology and the environment, as well as much else besides. The common theme is innovation: putting familiar ingredients together in a different way, to meet a real need, propelled by imagination and that grit of persistence that turns an idea into a thriving and expanding project.
The Observer and Nesta, the charity that promotes innovation, launched Britain's New Radicals in 2012. We had more than 200 entrants and we were encouraged by the response. Two years on, more than 1,000 applied or were nominated for the 2014 New Radicals. Many reached a superlative standard so the selection for the team of judges, who included scientist Nazneen Rahman, novelist Kamila Shamsie, Peter Holbrook, chief executive of Social Enterprise UK, and Radio 1 presenter Gemma Cairney, was challenging.
Some projects were excluded because they replicated similar ideas in the original 2012 50, or they duplicated a more advanced 2014 entry.
Schopenhauer said of an idea that initially may be derided for its simplicity or its ambition: "First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." Nesta recently published a list of 18 big ideas that have become part of our everyday lives. They include meals on wheels, the hospice movement, the Big Issue, first aid and fair trade. The internet has also opened the door to inventiveness – Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook to name but three innovations. Sometimes, a particular set of circumstances needs to fall into place. Michael Young, for instance, one of the originators of the Open University, had to wait for television to bring further education to crack-of-dawn enthusiasts.
So what next for this year's Radicals? At a reception on 9 September, they will meet one another and the original radicals, many of whom have flourished and expanded. For instance, Rubies in the Rubble (now garlanded with even more awards), which turns imperfect or unwanted fruit and vegetables into chutney, employs the homeless and those struggling to get back into work. Nesta will give the network two years of support. It's hoped that these projects will germinate more ideas. What they all do in different ways is cross traditional boundaries, challenge bureaucracy, develop new relationships and recharge the batteries of communities, large and small, often depleted by the shrinking of the traditional sources of support, including trade unions, working men's clubs, churches and the Workers' Educational Association.
Austerity has an enormous downside but necessity often triggers the leaps of faith that produce surprisingly effective projects that get by on little more than the commitment of their founders. At a time when celebrity culture and an addiction to fame for its own sake, rather than as a byproduct of achievement, are dominant features in society, we hope that it's refreshing and reaffirming to read how armies of people in so many different ways are making a genuine difference to others because they believe they can and because they care.
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