Pinnacle
Well-known member
What is this all about?
RYA Together on water
- Thread starter Pinnacle
- Start date
SaltyC
Well-known member
A new CEO reinventing the wheel?
RunAgroundHard
Well-known member
The RYA are trying to promote inclusive access to water activities for all. Free from bigotry, racism, sexism and harassment. That is not a bad thing in my view.
penfold
Well-known member
"There is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
There are ignorant people out there who need to hear the gospel and experience it for themselves. Although not near me please; it's awful and you wouldn't like it.
There are ignorant people out there who need to hear the gospel and experience it for themselves. Although not near me please; it's awful and you wouldn't like it.
laika
Well-known member
Did anyone actually have such an issue with the old logo that it was worth spending a sack load of members' money on a consultancy to come up with a new one and then all the work of rebranding everything? This is what they say about the new logo. Which is pretty much the letters “RYA”. Only in just blue now.
penfold
Well-known member
No coffee ring of corporate success? Disappointing, the young thrusters are slacking.
ylop
Well-known member
It’s an interesting question. I think the old logo and styling has been in use for as long as I can remember. 30+ years? Maybe more? Changing a design after all that time is a bold move. Not updating though is also a risk as the organisation can start to look dated and old fashioned, which lets face it the RYA already was 30 years ago.
The old logo didn’t particularly offend me and I think was more recognisably a logo and its variants with the tick for training centres etc worked well.
If I was a training centre with an unexpected rebrand in the middle of major inflation I’d be pissed off.
If I was actually trying to tackle an image problem I’d have started with the name before the logo! That said the name carries a lot of brand equity… but does it really reflect what the organisation is about?
If you are an unhappy member but don’t actually participate in elections etc - it’s your own fault!
penfold
Well-known member
The RYA looks old-fashioned because it's not doing its job; changing the logo is corporate bullshine.
Sandy
Well-known member
Problem is it does not know what its job is. It has diversified to widely, everything from dinghy racing to yachting (there might be a hint in the title there about what it should be doing) via narrowboats and all small low flying aircraft called foils.
laika
Well-known member
Given that this hasn’t been anything I recall being consulted or asked to vote on I’m not sure how you come to that conclusion.
Yachting has a diversity issue and I’ve no issues with making it more inclusive but I’d want to see some research-backed justification as to why the spend on a new logo will yield a tangible benefit.
capnsensible
Well-known member
Storm. Teacup.
SaltyC
Well-known member
Just had to go to the website as hadn't noticed the change in logo! To me it is now very bland, it reminds me of the rebrand of ICI many years ago, millions spent yet difference negligible.
Does sailing have the same problem with diversity that cricket has? This has been in the news this week.
Sailing is open to all, but perceived by many to be only for the rich so not considered by many?
Scaramouche proved the sport is open, thanks to a teacher with vision and drive the youngsters got an opportunity they never expected, they found a skill and interest, they went to the highest levels and expected to be excluded and unwelcome yet found the exact opposite, welcomed and assisted by all.
My children were introduced through school, an opportunity for 6 Saturday mornings through the local 'Gybe' scheme, run by volunteers using boats through the local authority outdoor centre, they never looked back!
Yet, even in a reasonably affluent middle class area many parents were unwilling to travel 12 miles and 'lose' a Saturday morning complaining the School should put on a minibus. The children of those parents unfortunately missed out.
How you overcome that barrier, Government or RYA I do not know.
Does sailing have the same problem with diversity that cricket has? This has been in the news this week.
Sailing is open to all, but perceived by many to be only for the rich so not considered by many?
Scaramouche proved the sport is open, thanks to a teacher with vision and drive the youngsters got an opportunity they never expected, they found a skill and interest, they went to the highest levels and expected to be excluded and unwelcome yet found the exact opposite, welcomed and assisted by all.
My children were introduced through school, an opportunity for 6 Saturday mornings through the local 'Gybe' scheme, run by volunteers using boats through the local authority outdoor centre, they never looked back!
Yet, even in a reasonably affluent middle class area many parents were unwilling to travel 12 miles and 'lose' a Saturday morning complaining the School should put on a minibus. The children of those parents unfortunately missed out.
How you overcome that barrier, Government or RYA I do not know.
RunAgroundHard
Well-known member
RYA did research into diversity and attitudes towards sailing some time ago. Barriers to participation tended to be assumed elitism rather than active bigotry in the UK. I think the latest campaign and branding is simply to widen the appeal rather than change a negative trait in the pastime.
RunAgroundHard
Well-known member
Scaramouch did not prove anything and was very late to the game. Sail training has been involved in social services for many decades. Disability sailing, blind sailing has been around for decades, same with woman sailing, hardly new.
Sailing has always been inclusive as far as I can tell. I am not aware of clubs restricting members as a general rule, unlike golf clubs had.
laika
Well-known member
In fairness I actually quite like the new branding. I prefer it to the old in terms of "modernity". But the previous brand is globally recognisable and there's a cost to changing it I'd like to know how was justified. I don't think the logo is a diversity issue.
Yet the vast majority of people fall into a small number of social groups. How often have we heard something like "Oh we have all sorts at our club, from Lords to builders!". Aside from the fact that most sailing builders I've met are loaded, anyone reading this forum knows there's a large number of averagely-off folk with small boats. But wealth is only one dimension and there's a fairly heavy bias towards, shall we say, more "traditional" viewpoints. I occasionally bring up my personal bugbear...how many clubs have as the centre of their social calendar a "Hog Roast"? Because all faiths and social groups are going to unite behind the slaying and eating of a pig? It's not deliberate or conscious exclusion, it just strikes me that UK sailing clubs are run by members for members who don't consider that other people may have different lifestyles and values. Last time I berthed in Royal Clarence 10 years ago there was a muslim guy who'd bought a boat and was trying to encourage muslims to go sailing. I don't know what happened to him and not in any way suggesting there's any connection but I was reminded of him when observing that this year's Royal Clarence bertholders' event is a Hog Roast.
Scaramouche is that classic "exception which proves the rule". Why is everyone still bringing up this one example if it's not out of the ordinary?
The RYA "Together on the Water" policy document is heavy on bold statements and remarkably light on concrete steps. The cynic in me wonders if this is going to be just another corporate US-style approach to "diversity" by people who don't understand the root of the problem is not just about legally protected attributes: Make bold statements, ensure the people in pictures on every web page are visually diverse, job done.
(the optimist in me will wait and see what happens next...)
RunAgroundHard
Well-known member
Good post laika, especially highlighting the (likely) unconscious bias of the hog roast. We all have biases and I wonder if the direction of the RYA is more to address this than overt biases that impact participation in our pastime. We shall see.
jac
Well-known member
the actual policy seems to be very light on detail other than challenging ourselves to be inclusive- where are the specific things that they will change to deliver this.
I do some strategy work as my day job. The start point to this should be to locate the actual barriers to participation and tackle those. I can see no evidence they have done that and suspect that this is just a woke wash.
whilst I can understand that if you’re from an ethnic minority then walking into a royal yacht club peopled by old, upper middle class privately educated professional people may be awkward but I would expect a white young working class person from a poor inland area may also be intimidated. The issue though is that a wealthy Asian person may be able to buy a decent boat and pay to keep it. If you’re a low income person then that may be a harder barrier to overcome.
Buying even a cheap dinghy and keeping it at an inland club may be the most accessible route in but even that requires that you know someone who can take you to the club to sail it as I suspect few are on public transport routes, requires that you can afford the club / storage fees. Can buy a wetsuit and other associated gear, can pay for some basic training.
all of this at a time when young people are struggling to pay off student deb, need two full time working people to buy a house, have rubbish pension arrangements and I think it becomes pretty clear why people may not sail as much as previous generations
I do some strategy work as my day job. The start point to this should be to locate the actual barriers to participation and tackle those. I can see no evidence they have done that and suspect that this is just a woke wash.
whilst I can understand that if you’re from an ethnic minority then walking into a royal yacht club peopled by old, upper middle class privately educated professional people may be awkward but I would expect a white young working class person from a poor inland area may also be intimidated. The issue though is that a wealthy Asian person may be able to buy a decent boat and pay to keep it. If you’re a low income person then that may be a harder barrier to overcome.
Buying even a cheap dinghy and keeping it at an inland club may be the most accessible route in but even that requires that you know someone who can take you to the club to sail it as I suspect few are on public transport routes, requires that you can afford the club / storage fees. Can buy a wetsuit and other associated gear, can pay for some basic training.
all of this at a time when young people are struggling to pay off student deb, need two full time working people to buy a house, have rubbish pension arrangements and I think it becomes pretty clear why people may not sail as much as previous generations
Biggles Wader
Well-known member
Im still paying for Deb
ctva
Well-known member
I missed the new logo on the email which I half read, went to the website just now and if that is the new logo, it’s even more bland than the last one about 20+ years ago!
fredrussell
Well-known member
The three whitest places on Earth are an episode of Friends, a sailing club house and a folk festival. If the RYA are trying to remove one of those from the list fair play to them.
