Heritage Week & Orienteering
Have you planned your event yet?
Following on from World Orienteering Week, Heritage week provides another wonderful opportunity to highlight our sport to families and the wider public within the framework laid out by National Heritage Week.
Every year a few clubs organise events for Heritage week, this year 17th to 25th August, the week before the primary schools return. The Heritage week website allows users to search for activities nearby under a
range of categories family event to tour, talk or exhibition and be active outdoors! The Heritage Week booklet is also available for free nationwide, distributed in libraries and public spaces, but requires registration of the event before Friday August 7th. There is no deadline for online registration.
Each year Heritage week has a theme, this year it’s Past Times, why not create a theme for your family friendly orienteering course, or go retro and ask your runners to bring their red pens and draw their course on the map like old times?! Dig out your 70’s nylons and dress up for the event too!
In years gone by Eileen of CNOC has developed courses for the younger members involving a tree course, having controls on some of the specimen trees around the lakes of Naas. Andrew of WATO hosts his heritage week event annually in the JFK Arboretum linking with their week of themed events. There are some wonderful ideas on the Heritage Week website which could be developed for orienteering too.
Heritage week ideas leaflet. Here are some of the ideas that I found which could be adapted to orienteering.
35 -Create a self-guided history or nature trail on paper
41 -Identify trees on a walking tour.
46 Bring a group for a guided running tour.
48 Create a heritage trail around your local area. Maybe a temporary trail during Heritage Week will inspire your community to build a permanent one in the future!
85 Create a selfie scavenger hunt. Prepare a list of photos participants must take within a certain time limit e.g. a Georgian building, an oak tree etc.
Remember to entice a newcomer to orienteering will require plenty of notice, so get your event registered now and avail of some free publicity. Don’t forget to post your event on your facebook page at the same time so it appears on local newsfeeds early, this way it may pop up a few times over the summer and the viewer might look further the second or third time. It’s always good to update or add snippets of information as the event comes nearer, that way FB knows it’s an active event and an active page.
Seasoned orienteers may drop everything at less than a weeks notice to travel to an event, but newcomers will require a drip drip approach… so please get planning and tell everyone, now!
Already got your event organised? Then don’t forget to registere at the link here.
https://www.heritageweek.ie/register-an-event/organise-an-event
Feel free to give your feedback or ask for assistance in promotion of your event to comms@orienteering.ie, working together to promote Orienteering.
