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We want Welsh Harp Sailing Club to be part of the community around it, not simply a club for the people who already sail. We actively reach out to local groups and communities to open sailing to people who might never otherwise have tried it, helping build a club and a sport that genuinely reflects the diversity of the area we call home.

Below are four projects we have delivered over the last couple of years. Each has been made possible through a combination of financial support from partner organisations, investment from the club itself, and the time and commitment of our volunteers. We are very grateful to RYA London and South East, Thames Active, Canal & River Trust, We:Restart and the London Borough of Brent for their financial support, and to all the organisations and individuals who have worked with us to make these projects happen.

The Well Well.

A Saturday of sailing, poetry, and a group discovering the water together for the first time.

We welcomed a group from EFA London (English for Action) who support adult English language learners from communities under-represented in sailing — through the Well-Well project at Chalkhill Community Centre, for a day that turned out to be as much about words as it was about the water. Twenty participants, six of our volunteers, and a morning spent taking turns at the helm in our two-person boats — many trying sailing for the very first time.

Over lunch, the group turned to poetry, using two sailing-themed poems as a starting point before writing their own. One stayed with us:

Aimless life is like a boat,
Yearning for the sea to gloat,
But also scared to set sail,
To weather the storm and the gale.

...

For in this moment, we are one
With the waters, the sky and the sun

By the afternoon, everyone was back on the water for a proper race, following a course laid out around the Harp — quite a different sight from the straight dash up the lake some had been expecting. Genuine thought had gone into making the day work for everyone, from sourcing the right footwear and raingear to simply being ready for whatever came up, calmly and without fuss.

Sailing, we like to say, is a great leveller — a team effort, open to anyone willing to give it a go. Days like this are where we get to prove it.

Two days that stayed with us

Two of the most challenging, and most rewarding, days we've ever had at the Harp

Not every partnership starts easily, and this was one of the ones that asked the most of us. We worked with a local charity supporting young people in difficult circumstances, to bring a group of 12 young people, aged 11 to 16, onto the water for two days of RYA Level 1 training — alongside a separate space for crafts and Harp-based activities for a further 12 children under 11.

They were two of the most challenging, yet most rewarding, days we've ever had at the Harp. Our volunteers were working with children who had been through real difficulty in their young lives, and there were moments that asked a lot of everyone involved. But there was also pure joy — pride in a first sail completed, in a skill learned, in simply being out on the water and being good at something.

By the end of the two days, every one of them had learned to sail. Some faced down real fear to do it. Several came away with an RYA certificate in hand, and we held an awards presentation to mark what they'd achieved — because it deserved to be celebrated properly, not just noted and moved past.

We came away from those two days humbled, and reminded why we do this. Sailing can't undo what a young person has already been through. But for a couple of days, it can offer something steady: a boat that responds to what you do, a team that's rooting for you, and a small, real achievement that's entirely your own.

Setting Sail

A programme built to prove that sailing belongs to everyone in Brent, not just a narrow few.

Brent is one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in London, and sailing carries a reputation, fair or not, of being a sport for a narrow slice of people. Setting Sail set out to close that gap directly — to bring people from more diverse backgrounds onto the water, and to let them judge for themselves whether sailing was really "for them" or not.

We started with parents of children at local primary schools — many of them full-time carers whose own lives had been reshaped by having children — and built the programme around the hours their kids were at school. Over four weeks, twice a week, participants worked through a taster and then RYA Level 1, with funding from Canal & River Trust, Thames Active, and RYA London & South East. It wasn't designed as a one-off. Everyone who wanted to continue was supported into membership, with free ongoing training to keep going afterwards.

We had the programme independently evaluated by Dr Ella Guest, Senior Research Fellow in Psychology at the University of the West of England, using pre- and post-course questionnaires. The results mattered to us as much as the funding did: a statistically significant increase in participants' confidence on the water, and a real, measurable shift in how they saw the sport itself — several told us they'd assumed sailing simply wasn't for people like them. Every single participant said they'd recommend the course to friends and family.

One story stayed with us. A participant began the course with very low self-esteem; when she told friends she'd signed up, they told her she'd never learn to sail. Encouraged by her own children, she persevered — completed the course, gained her qualification, and even picked up the basics of handling a powerboat along the way.

We're proud of Setting Sail not because it was a single good programme, but because it was designed to lead somewhere — from a taster, to a qualification, to a genuine place in the club. We'd like to keep building on it: reaching more schools and families, and supporting graduates who want to go further to become assistant instructors themselves.

A summer holiday on the water
48 children, two days and a first taste of the Harp.

Delivered in partnership with the International Centre for Integration and Cohesion, Canal & River Trust and Faiths Forum for London.

This summer, we opened our doors to 48 local children over two days, as part of a summer holiday camp run in partnership with the International Centre for Integration and Cohesion, Canal & River Trust, and Faiths Forum for London. For most of them, it was a first taste of sailing — a half-day taster, straight into a boat, with our instructors alongside them the whole way.

It mattered enough to us that we went beyond what had originally been agreed with our partners, putting in extra staffing and equipment ourselves to make sure every child got a proper, well-supported experience rather than a rushed one. The club also worked flexibly with the partners on the day to make the experience as welcoming and inclusive as possible for the wider families involved.

One of the loveliest moments came off the back of that flexibility: a mum and a group of the kids got taken out for a powerboat tour of the Harp, seeing the reservoir properly for the first time, from the water rather than the bank.

Two days, 48 children, and — for many of them — a first real chance to find out what the Welsh Harp has to offer, right on their doorstep.

And this is only the beginning

We don't see outreach as a series of one-off activities. Where we can, we want to help people move from a first experience of sailing into something longer term: learning new skills, becoming members, returning to the water and eventually helping others discover sailing too.

Our ambition is to build lasting partnerships with local organisations, schools and communities so that more people around the Welsh Harp see sailing as something that is genuinely for them.