Cultivating safe space: Lessons for sport-for-development projects and events

© 2014 Human Kinetics, Inc. Recent research has examined how sports events and sport-for-development projects can create, sustain, and maximize positive social impacts for local communities. This article takes this debate forward by arguing that the cultivation of safe space is a key ingredient of sport-for-development management and community event leverage. Safe space is conceptualized as a multidimensional process that involves physical, psychological/ affective, sociocultural, political, and experimental dimensions. Drawing on empirical findings from Sri Lanka, Israel, and Brazil, the article shows how these dimensions of safe space operate and interact in practice, and identifies practical strategies that sport managers, policymakers, and practitioners can use to cultivate safe spaces in and through sports projects and events

Commentary: Reflections on theory building in sport for development and peace

Building on the limited yet important groundwork that has been laid in regard to the theoretical and conceptual underpinning of sport for development and peace, this special issue provides a starting point for exploring the opportunities and challenges of theory building in SDP. In our reflective commentary, we engage critically with the four articles in the special issue through a discussion of cross-cutting themes and issues