This Girl Can Campaign Returns To TV

Sport England’s National Lottery-funded This Girl Can, winner of Campaign of the Year at the BT Sport Industry Awards 2016, returns to television screens today on Friday 24^th February.

The adverts will show real women and girls playing sport and getting active, with Sport England stating the ambition is still about overcoming judgement – but will also feature new messages to empower women, and a range of new and returning faces.

This time around, the television advert is set to a new soundtrack blended with a narrative by poet, Maya Angelou. ‘Phenomenal Woman’ including 15-year-old trampolinist, Cerys McIntosh, and 69-year-old outdoor swimmer Sue Bairstow showcase their ways of keeping active to the words of the 1978 poem, published in Angelou’s third volume ‘And Still I Rise’.

Other personal stories brought to life include new mum Stephanie Outlaw, student kickboxer Fakhira Mohamad Hassan Mukhtar and blade-runner Debbie Squance from Plymouth.

Sport England CEO, Jennie Price, said: “This Girl Can has made a real difference since it launched, with the number of women doing regular physical activity and sport now at an all-time high. But there’s a lot more to do.

Our research showed the dialogue many of us have in our heads about whether we look OK, whether we are good enough, whether we belong here doesn’t go away – we just learn to manage it. That’s why the reinforcement of seeing women who look like us playing sport and talking honestly about how they feel about it is so powerful.

“A new message this time is something women don’t usually hear: it’s OK to take a break, to have a week off, to walk not run. No-one is saying this to us. Few magazines say it; sports brands don’t say it.

“Many of the women we’ve featured talk about stopping, then starting again. It can feel like the hardest thing in the world to return after a few weeks off, when you fear you’ve lost ground or fitness, but we want to surface this as a discussion point, to say it’s normal to take a break, but that needn’t stop you for good.”

This Girl Can is funded thanks to Lottery Players and Arabella Gilchrist, Head of Brand for The National Lottery, said: “We’re incredibly proud of our association with the This Girl Can and especially the impact it has had on British women over the past 12 months – to be able to say that funds raised by National Lottery players are enabling the next phase fills us with immense pride. Over the last 22 years, The National Lottery has had a transformative effect on people and communities throughout the UK – and in the same way, this fantastic new campaign will have a life-changing effect on women in every walk of life, in every nook and cranny of the nation. The results so far speak volumes and we look forward to seeing the stories unfold over the coming weeks.”

For more about This Girl Can, go to thisgirlcan.co.uk where you can find out about the women in the campaign, get tips on how to get active and join the national debate or follow This Girl Can on Facebook or Twitter.