{"id":16390,"date":"2020-04-23T12:51:08","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T12:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/?p=16390"},"modified":"2021-02-01T12:11:28","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T12:11:28","slug":"coronavirus-major-strategic-update-april-23rd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/coronavirus-major-strategic-update-april-23rd\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus Major Strategic Update – April 23rd"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

A month on from Boris Johnson\u2019s lock-down announcement, Coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on society as a whole around the world. We of course will be focusing on the impact this is having on martial arts. In short, it\u2019s been largely crippling and devastating for the industry as a whole and now is the time \u2013 perhaps more so than ever before \u2013 for us to pull together and adapt. If we don\u2019t, we will not survive.<\/h3>\n

As our clubs will already know, we are proud to be at the forefront of technological developments in the martial arts world. We\u2019re also self-funded with absolutely no support from Sport England or the UK Government, and this puts us as at a huge advantage. We\u2019re fast to adapt and are not tethered to the whims of funding pots and bureaucracy. We\u2019re going to put this to it\u2019s best use possible now to help as many clubs as possible survive.<\/h5>\n
We will be speaking with Sport England on the week commencing 27th April and would like to formally collect as much data as possible on the impact of Covid 19 on BMABA clubs and instructors.<\/h5>\n

Where are we now with Coronavirus and martial arts?<\/h1>\n

Unfortunately, things haven\u2019t improved for our sector since Boris Johnson\u2019s last briefing. The continued lockdown is going to exacerbate an already fragile martial arts landscape. Whilst there is an option of survival buried within online teaching, uptake seems slow.<\/h4>\n

During the 22nd April 2020 daily briefing, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty remarked;<\/p>\n

\n

The UK will have to live with some disruptive social measures for at least the rest of the year, the government\u2019s chief medical adviser has said.<\/p>\n

Prof Chris Whitty said it was \u201cwholly unrealistic\u201d to expect life would suddenly return to normal soon. He said \u201cin the long run\u201d the ideal way out would be via a \u201chighly effective vaccine\u201d or drugs to treat the disease. But he warned that the chance of having those within the next calendar year was \u201cincredibly small\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis disease is not going to be eradicated, it is not going to disappear,\u201d he said, at the government\u2019s daily coronavirus briefing. \u201cSo we have to accept that we are working with a disease that we are going to be with globally\u2026 for the foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n

(BBC NEWS<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems highly likely we will\u00a0NOT\u00a0<\/strong>see a fast relaxation of social distancing, nor will we be returning \u2018back to normal\u2019 any time soon. Realistically, we need to brace for more difficult times ahead. The premise of \u2018plan for the worst, hope for the best<\/strong>\u2018 seems the most prudent thing for our clubs and instructors to now be doing.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re hoping this will pass over and return to normality shortly, we now implore you to take action to keep your club alive.<\/p>\n

So What Are We (The BMABA) Doing To Help?<\/h1>\n

It\u2019s important to stress again that we are self funded and have absolutely no help from any external parties in our efforts to prop up our clubs. We hope this might help provide some context for you when assessing whether or not you feel we\u2019re doing enough but also when benchmarking our action against other NGBs whom we know are doing very little, if anything at all.<\/h4>\n

We can say with certainty there is no other martial arts association in the UK doing as much as we are right now on the resources available.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s just some <\/em>of what we\u2019re doing right now to provide immediate support;<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

We\u2019re funding \u00a330,000 of subsidies and discounts, with more available if needed.<\/h4>\n

Whilst we can\u2019t provide grants to clubs (we have far too many to make this viable) we are providing in excess of \u00a330,000 subsidies to anyone who needs it. Be it a new registration<\/a> or a renewal \u2013 membership, insurance, safeguarding training and so on; everything is discounted and we\u2019re providing further price cuts wherever possible to help our clubs. If we breach the \u00a330k (which we are set to) we have lined up another \u00a315,000 in support. If we reach the \u00a345k mark we\u2019ll extend it again. You don\u2019t need to do anything to access this discounting \u2013 it\u2019s applied to every price on our website automatically.<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

We\u2019ve footed the bill for insurance adaptations and are innovating with our broking team<\/h4>\n

We were one of the very first associations to be able to confirm to our members that your BMABA instructor insurance<\/strong><\/a>, served via our group cover policy,\u00a0will<\/strong> cover both pre-recorded and live-stream remote sessions. We took that one further by providing a dedicated online delivery suite<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to provide help with logistics, mechanics and technology too. Whilst the only real current restriction (in insurance terms) is clubs not being able to recruit new members online, we\u2019ve also overcome this too. This will be a UK first and we will confirm details very shortly.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re commissioning thousands of pounds of research and datasets<\/h4>\n

Without data it\u2019s impossible to make a balanced argument for help from Sport England. Martial Arts traditionally has nothing in place to provide data or background. To remedy this, we\u2019re funding thousands of pounds of research both internally and externally to the association. Already our National Survey has received thousands of responses and it\u2019s just a start. We\u2019re funding all of this internally for the benefit of the whole industry. You can learn more from our\u00a0Fighting Chance Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re building the UK\u2019s largest group of martial arts social enterprises<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s crucial we now have the might of a large proportion of the UK martial arts sector behind us if we are to speak on its behalf. To help us reach more clubs and instructors and influence more industry change, we\u2019re launching the BMABA Group of Social Enterprises. This is absolutely massive so we’re going to both keep it slightly underwraps, and save it for a separate press release shortly. We assure you, the Group will come with benefits for every member and we look forward to sharing it shortly.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re petitioning Sport England to step in and help you<\/h4>\n

This is the big one. Having launched \u00a3195,000,000 of funding to help the UK sport and recreation sector survive Covid 19, we\u2019re determined our clubs should receive a cut of this. We’re engaging with Sport England and conducting emergency funding surveys to ensure we know what support is needed, has been awarded and has been turned down.<\/p>\n

This is in and among our huge response to Covid 19 which includes massive updates and upgrades to our membership packages, tonnes of free confidential support and help plus so much more to help UK martial arts through coronavirus.<\/h4>\n

<\/h2>\n

What Can Clubs Do To Survive?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Our official member’s press release contains a full checklist of things every club should be doing right now to give them the best chances of surviving, along with a ‘snapshot’ survey for us to present to Sport England, to enable us to show clearly the need for financial support.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”33px”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1587646146245{padding-top: 35px !important;padding-right: 35px !important;padding-bottom: 35px !important;padding-left: 35px !important;background-color: #c0ed90 !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Not a member yet?<\/b><\/h3>\n

We’re providing thousands of pounds in subsidies to make joining us on premium options or with insurance affordable, and we offer 6 months free affiliate membership too should you just wish to make the most of our Covid 19 response.<\/h4>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”33px”][vc_btn title=”See Membership Options” style=”3d” shape=”square” color=”green” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fbmaba.org.uk%2Fclubs%2Fjoin|||”][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_empty_space height=”33px”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Existing Member?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Please complete our Sport England snapshot survey and read our full strategic update.<\/h4>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”33px”][vc_btn title=”Read The Full Update” style=”3d” shape=”square” color=”peacoc” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmybmaba.org.uk%2Fcoronavirus-major-strategic-update%2F|||”][vc_btn title=”Complete The Survey” style=”3d” shape=”square” color=”peacoc” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmybmaba.org.uk%2Fcovid-19-sport-england-snapshot-survey%2F|||”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] A month on from Boris Johnson\u2019s lock-down announcement, Coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on society as a whole around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[841,1164],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bmaba.org.uk\/clubs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}