GA at the Commonwealth Games

As you are no doubt aware, Glasgow is hosting the Commonwealth Games this summer. It is a truncated version, featuring only 10 sports, one of which is not archery. So we thought - why doesn’t GA hold its own events so that archery is represented?

Putting on events costs money and GA is a charity, so there are limits on funds and how we fund things. However, Glasgow Life announced a £250,000 (later expanded to £1.25 million) Commonwealth Games 2026 Festival fund at the beginning of the year, which local groups could apply to for grants of up to £10,000. So we decided to apply.

The application form was quite long, with lots of criteria to meet, details to provide about the club and what we proposed to use any grant for, how those help meet the Festival’s objectives and how much it would all cost. We chatted in person at our sessions, exchanged emails and discussed all this at the trustee committee meetings. From that we drew up a list of proposed activities and costings and then drafted an application which was shared for comment. Finally, we put it all together and sent it off by the deadline date. Then we waited.

We knew there would be a lot of interest in the fund from groups all over Glasgow and so a lot of applications to process. We were also contacted by Scottish Archery prior to submitting our application, as they were intending to make one too and wanted to check it didn’t overlap or compete with what we were proposing. Just before the date on which successful applications were to be announced, we were notified that due to the level of interest the announcement would be put back a week – so we had to wait a bit longer …

Our application was successful! You might have worked that out if you (well mainly Finlay) were filmed the other Sunday for the Festival promo video. We were granted just over £5000 to deliver what we had set out in our application. Of course it wasn’t the full amount we had asked for, but it is the way of these things that it never is and so you always ask for a bit more than you think you might need knowing you might need to use other sources of funding to meet any shortfall.

Chippy Minton making our new frames

So what are we delivering? As there is no archery in the official Commonwealth Games, we wanted to run at least one competition during the Festival Period (23 May to 9 August), and we proposed two – an ‘American’ similar to that we held last year but this time open to members of other clubs, plus a second open competition later in the summer ideally with UK record status to attract archers from far and wide.

The first competition will be ‘The Glasgow 2026 Festival Open Shoot’ on Sunday 5 July, an ‘American’ round (30 arrows at 60/40 yards, 30 at 50/30 yards and 30 at 40/20 yards).  The second a WA900 (30 arrows at 60/40 metres, 30 at 50/30 metres and 30 at 40/20 metres) on Sunday 2 August which is also the open outdoor championship for the West of Scotland Archery Association this year. Details of both can be found on the club's Event page. The grant is allowing GA to meet part of the costs of the competitions by purchasing some new bosses and stands, plus faces and other equipment needed to deliver them. Book your places soon or you might miss out. Or if you don’t fancy shooting but can help out at the competitions, let John, our competition organiser, know.

The other part of our proposals centred around giving people from Glasgow’s diverse communities an opportunity to try out archery, and especially those who maybe wouldn’t usually get a chance to. To do this we said we’d deliver at least 4 taster sessions to 120 people, plus soft archery sessions in schools. The trustees put their heads together and reached out to organisations, community groups and schools across Glasgow and so far we have agreed to deliver:

• Soft archery and taster session for Govan Scout Group, at Hutchesons @ Pollok Park, Saturday 30 May
• Soft archery sessions at Hazelwood School, Thursdays 4 and 11 June
• Soft archery session at Blackfriars Primary School, Friday 5 June
• Taster session for Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre’s Friendship Group, at Hutchesons @ Pollok Park, Saturday 6 June
• Soft archery session at Langside Primary School, Friday 12 June
• Taster session and soft archery session for Cranhill Development Trust, probably Saturday 20 June (venue and date tbc)
• Soft archery session at St. Philomena’s Primary School (date tbc)
• Taster session at St. Andrew Secondary School (date tbc)
• Taster session for Glasgow Association for Mental Health, at Hutchesons @ Pollok Park (date tbc)
• Taster session for The Well Multicultural Resource Centre, at Hutchesons @ Pollok Park (date tbc)

We also have another possible taster session or two in discussion. The grant is covering the costs of running these sessions, including purchase of soft archery kits, light portable bosses and stands, new/replacement beginners equipment, travel and volunteer expenses.

With the two competitions too, that’s a lot of activity over a few months! Trustees and a few others have volunteered to run the agreed sessions, but if anyone else can offer their time, that would be great (but for the school sessions you must have a current PVG check). We are a volunteer led club and charity, so rely on our members to deliver all our activities, so please let one of the trustees (Michael, Jonah, John, Chris Blair, Bill, Jordan, Finlay, Tony or Henri) know if you’re interested in helping. Not only would it be appreciated but it will be fun.

All this will be good for GA’s and archery’s profile, gives a chance to try archery for those who otherwise might not get an opportunity to, should bring in in some new members, ensures archery is represented as part of this year’s Commonwealth Games and of course helps us meet our objectives as a charity.

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Many thanks to Henri Krishna for supplying us the above update.