Founders
We set out with one simple goal
Ben Kirk, Co-founder and Director
Ben was a former secondary schools PE teacher, but his journey to becoming the co-founder of Inspired Playgrounds started when he founded another business, Key Stage Coaching.
Key Stage Coaching (now Inspired Somerset) still operates in Somerset, providing outstanding PE lessons to Primary Schools and this was the springboard to the creation of Inspired Playgrounds. When entering back into the world of Primary School PE, some 8 years after leaving a role for the local sports partnership to go travelling. Ben and Marcus Holmes who you can also read about on this page, observed significant changes in teacher’s workloads and the physical literacy and activity levels of the children.
This sparked the need to come up with something innovative, which could make a real difference to the lives of the children at Primary Schools. What started as a way to get children more physically active during the school day has grown to impriving behaviour, helping children to engage more with their learning, giving teacher’s time back, developing sports leaders that schools are proud of and that play an active role in the school, and of course still raising physical activity levels as there are such huge benefits of doing so.
The vision and mission has grown to impact school in every area of the UK. Possibly even beyond…
Marcus Holmes, Co-founder And Director
Marcus is an individual with 20 years of experience of working within Education, Sporting Governing bodies and Community Inclusion Projects. As a Sports Project Manager for Somerset Rural Youth Project and Senior Development Coach for Somerset Activity & Sports Partnership, Marcus has always achieved success in developing innovative projects to engage and inspire difficult to reach groups and individuals.
Moving into a football development role has seen Marcus play a key part in growing the game and increasing the participation levels within Somerset. Marcus has experience of being a Coach Mentor for the F.A., imparting his knowledge and supporting the next generation of Coaches.
A firm belief of ‘every single child can enjoy being active’ and ‘every child should be given the chance to fall in love with P.E, and Sport’ are the cornerstones of Marcus’ ongoing motivation and desire to implement new projects and ‘make a difference’.