RYA Connected Conference - Midlands
Book now to join the RYA Connected Conference in the Midlands
Now's your chance to come together with your local sailing community to learn, grow and connect. This exciting event is free to attend and you can send as many members of your team along as you’d like while there are spaces available.
This year, we’ll be welcoming speakers from Notts County Sailing Club, Northampton Sailing Club and Chelmarsh Sailing Club to cover a wide range of topics such as modernising sailing clubs and how to maintain clear priorities when growing the range of activities you offer.
Here’s what your day will look like
Date
15 November 2026
Time
09.15 - 16.30
Location
Ashby School,
Nottingham Rd,
Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
LE65 1DT
Here’s what we’ll be talking about
Your day will start with an opportunity to network, followed by an opening plenary with our guest speaker Giles Graham. Across the rest of the day, you'll have further chances to network with other clubs and will have a choice of forums, presentations and workshops to attend before the closing plenary.
Forums are a chance to share your views on a given topic and hear the insight of others. Workshops are facilitator led, with a combination of presentation, activities and discussion. Presentations are a chance to listen to an expert or another clubs story.
You will have a choice of each of the sessions to attend. To help you plan ahead with your team, this is what we’ll be focusing on this year:
Forums
- Growing opportunities for disabled sailors
- Delivering better racing
- Getting more young people sailing
- Overcoming challenges in training
- How to deliver yacht and keelboat activity
- Engaging and welcoming more women and girls into our sport
- Creating better blue spaces and reducing environmental impact
- Welfare Officers session with your local Sport Welfare officer
- Using digital tools to improve the running of your organisation
Presentations
- Growing instructor and coach teams
- Safe recruitment: who is eligible for DBS checks
- Get Wing Foiling
- Electrification of your powerboat fleet
- IQ Foils World Championships
- Accidents & Incidents
- Embedding a diverse range of activity into your organisation
- Electrification of your powerboat fleet
- Using AI
- Supporting your Race Team
- Harnessing the Power of Content
Workshops
- Handling complaints and safeguarding concerns with confidence
- Growing instructor and race coach teams
- Growing racing activity and race teams
- Getting it right for women and girls
- Building programmes that get more young people out on the water
- Understanding and meeting members needs
Sessions led by your local clubs and centres
- Embedding a diverse range of activity into your organisation
With a broadening range of activities and member priorities following diversification of activities, it can be difficult for clubs to have clear objectives and offers that keep members engaged and satisfied. Hear from Notts County SC and Chelmarsh SC how to successfully blend a range of activities and priorities successfully for the benefit of the whole club.
- Partnering with clubs to create more opportunities
Could working together with another sailing club help you both achieve more? Notts County Sailing Club will be sharing details about how partnering with another club has helped them create more opportunities and benefits for both clubs.
- How to successfully modernise your club
Everyone faces pressure to modernise and adapt to change to grow and thrive but how can you do this effectively? Northampton Sailing Club will be leading a session on their recent successful work to modernise the way their club operates, starting with making organisational changes to help them evolve.
For more detailed information on all the above sessions, download the full agenda.
Book now
All Connected events are FREE to attend for RYA Affiliates.
Many of our affiliates find they get most benefit from RYA Connected Conferences by sending multiple members of the team along to learn as much as possible and spur each other into taking action back at your venue. Attendees may already be on your board or involved in your operations, or they may be interested in doing so in future – an RYA Connected Conference is an excellent way to get them started.
There’s no limit to the number of people you can send, but please be aware that we expect this event to be fully booked so book now to avoid disappointment!
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