Speakers
Description
The imperative to empower communities through sport-related volunteering often forms a key part of Olympic and Sport-Mega-Event (SME) campaigns. Beyond event delivery, sport-related volunteering may also be operationalised to aid a variety of civil society agendas including shifting attitudes towards social responsibility, fostering community identity and purpose, and enhancing citizens’ engagement with wider global and development issues. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the ability for an Olympic or SMES to catalyse sport sector activity, the success and sustainability of sport within a post-Olympic/SME city is contingent upon many factors. In addition to favourable geo-political and economic conditions, this includes sport receiving appropriate political recognition and resourcing, appropriate institutional and governance frameworks, robust stakeholder networks and organisational partnerships, effective leadership and collective agency. Accordingly, in this paper we examine these issues within the context of Athens, Greece; a post-Olympic (2004) metropolis in which legacies of sport and volunteering have existed uneasily within a landscape of economic and political turbulence, global and regional tension and public mistrust. Drawing on volunteerism debates, stakeholder theories and sport development frameworks, we employed a qualitative, mixed-method, research design comprising semi-structured interviews and surveys with 19 key civil society professionals and Athens 2004 volunteer programme stakeholders. We contend that continued contextual uncertainty has encouraged innovative sector development in Athens and, concomitantly, inspired individual agents of change and provided space for organisational protagonists. Ultimately, we call for continued appraisal of post-Olympic landscapes and critical interrogation of where and how new collaborative cross-sector opportunities may be generated and sustainable capacity crafted.
