Alpkit Foundation grants back climbing at every level, from schools bouldering competitions and a pupil-run club to the GB youth squad competing abroad.
A climbing wall is one of the few places in outdoor sport where a total beginner and a future Olympian could be trying the same route on the same afternoon. That's the appeal, and also the problem: getting a child onto the wall for the first time, and keeping the best of them climbing all the way to international competition, both cost money at every step.
The Alpkit Foundation has backed that whole spectrum: the schools competition that gives hundreds of children their first go on a climbing wall, the lunchtime club a pupil built to outlast him, and the national squad representing Great Britain on the world stage.
Hundreds of first-timers, one afternoon
The Sheffield Schools bouldering competition, run each year by Thornbridge Outdoors and The Climbing Works, gives children from across Sheffield and the wider area a shot at climbing, many for the first time. Grants from the Alpkit Foundation have helped cover entry costs for schools that couldn't otherwise afford to take part, including five schools in one year alone. "Our overall aim is to create an inclusive competition for children from a variety of backgrounds, many of whom have never climbed before," says Ruth Harrington of The Climbing Works. One space in the final is reserved for a school for pupils with special educational needs, regardless of how it scores in qualifying. "There's a great team behind the competition and it's so special because everyone can have a go," says Jill Whittaker of Thornbridge Outdoors. "You don't have to have climbed regularly or go to a club."
The club built to outlast its founder
Grove Academy in Dundee has a climbing club that only exists because one pupil, James, decided it should. He set it up for senior pupils, trained around six staff to run it, and kept the focus purely recreational: a chance to climb, socialise and improve, whatever a member's starting fitness. A grant went toward reducing the cost of entry to the wall, so pupils facing financial hardship could attend regularly rather than occasionally. "Each of the members, trained or not, has improved their climbing grade and confidence on the wall," James says. "Off the wall they meet new friends and develop trust and communication through belaying." He wanted the club to keep running long after he left Grove Academy: built by a pupil, for pupils, funded to outlast him.
Backing the ones who go all the way
Some of the children who get their first foothold at a schools competition end up representing their country. The British Mountaineering Council's Youth Squad and National Schools Climbing Competition series gives young climbers a route from grassroots comps to international competition, but sending volunteers to staff and support events abroad isn't free. A grant from the Alpkit Foundation went toward covering those travel costs, without which the BMC couldn't have staffed the events at all. "Alpkit Foundation support ensured young GB climbers could fulfil their dreams of performing on the world's stage," says Zoe Spriggins, the BMC's Competitions Programme Manager. At the time, the BMC was also developing a schools top-roping competition series of its own, the same kind of grassroots entry point that got so many of the Sheffield finalists onto a wall in the first place.
The Alpkit Foundation backs climbing at every level, from a school's first bouldering competition to Great Britain's youth squad. If you run a project doing this kind of work, find out how to apply.