Award-winning charity Sport Aberdeen has revealed its results and the positive impact it made on local communities over the last budget year, demonstrating increased activity across all key delivery areas.    

During the 2023/24 year, Sport Aberdeen recorded over 1.4m visits to its venues and had an impressive19,000 people signed up to one of its memberships or coached programmes.

With a focus not only on providing a universal wellbeing service for all, Sport Aberdeen has continued to go above and beyond to provide specialist support for young people, elderly citizens and those living with long term health conditions.

This support includes the following activities:

• Over 7,500 children got active every week through its coached programmes, with over 1,000 weekly classes including swimming, ice skating, snowsports, tennis, gymnastics and dance.
• Over 5,500 children participated in its Learn to Swim programme, and over 2,200 Primary 4 pupils were provided with free swimming lessons.
• 2,000 individuals with additional support needs took part in a programme of outdoor activities, including mountain biking, sand boarding and rock climbing.
• Active Lifestyles programme – supporting individuals with long term health conditions – had 37,000 older adults taking part across more than 4,000 sessions.
• 6,000 participants took part in its Walk Aberdeen walking groups.
• Over 115,000 rounds of golf were played, with its Golf membership sales increasing by 57%.

Last month, Sport Aberdeen celebrated the opening of its newly renovated functional fitness studio at Get active @ Jesmond, named The Quad.

The charity is excited about the future opportunities which lie ahead. These include the upgrade of its facilities at Westburn Park, developing more programmes to help support child obesity and e enhancing its offering to ensure elderly adults not only live longer, but live better.

Images above: Artists impression of Get active @ Westburn

Continued collaboration with its partners will be crucial for Sport Aberdeen to deliver increased social value.

Tony Dawson, Chairman, said: “At Sport Aberdeen, we pride ourselves in getting things done.

“We help people of all ages and abilities to improve their lives through sport and physical activity. We are passionate about improving the health and wellbeing of our city.

“We run top class facilities to ensure people have fun, feel good and we’ll continue to work closely with our partners to make our city a healthier, happier place.”

Keith Heslop, Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are committed to creating more sport and physical activity opportunities and we must continue to invest in sport and leisure in Aberdeen.

“By doing so, we are not solely building fitness centres, we are investing in preventive healthcare, reducing future medical costs, and improving the quality of life for our citizens.”

To watch Sport Aberdeen’s Annual Review 2023/24 video, please click here.