Speedo - Swim United

Client: Speedo

Despite swimming being part of the national curriculum, 1 in 4 children leaves primary school unable to swim every year. That’s 25% of all kids who are at risk of drowning if they were to fall into water.

Typically, these children come from ethnic minority and socially disadvantaged backgrounds and with pool closures and the cost of living crisis, the issue is getting worse. Speedo partnered with youth and communities specialist Livity, to kickstart a movement to bring equity to the pool and get more families swimming. We worked with the worst affected communities, schools and alongside The Black Swim Association and GLL (Better Gyms), to research, co-design and launch a 360 degree platform. Swim United, Livity and Speedo galvanised a nation behind equity in the water through: - Raising awareness of the issue through beautiful content viewed over 26m times. The content centred around untold stories from our target communities and independent research showed that it inspired the target audience to get in the water. - Direct education - Finding and working with the communities that needed the most support, providing swimming lessons to 1,300 disadvantaged kids across London - School engagement - directly engaging over 6,000 further children, parents and teachers through schools packs, ‘swimzines’, swimming aids and support - Enlisting support from Ellie Simmons, Adam Peaty and Michael Gunning, as well as a broader stakeholder partnership across the swim community to demand better from the Government. This campaign ultimately led to the Government investing £63m to support leisure centres with pools.