Orienteering Edinburgh: Lessons and Moving Forwards

Over the past 8 weeks, with a break over Christmas, Scottish Orienteering development team with the support of local volunteers have been running a series of events called Orienteering Edinburgh at Festival Square. Orienteering Edinburgh is aimed at newcomers and uses MapRun over SI Punching for simplicity and accessibility benefits. Events have taken place at the same time and place each week. As of February 15th, the event moved to the Meadows with the aim of attracting a new audience and providing a new challenge for our regular participants.

Recently, in the last couple of weeks, we have seen our participation numbers begin to grow. Those who have attended since the start have begun to join clubs, enter local events and encourage their friends along.

From hosting Orienteering Edinburgh, we have learnt a lot about attracting participants. Consistency, however, has proven key in getting participants to come along. Participants had often seen us in Festival Square for a few weeks before they decided to sign up. A key source of marketing for us was participants referring us to their friends and colleagues. Participants would generally come along to a few sessions before they referred their friends along. Patience and accepting that growing an audience takes time has been a key learning for us. It took about 6 weeks before our numbers started to grow. 

Consistency has also been a key learning for us in terms of social media. Through posting on the Orienteering Edinburgh Facebook page and Instagram at least three times a week, we have been able to grow our following. Having high quality images on our social media has also been important in promoting the event. We have had photographer and local ESOC member Crawford Lindsay at each of our events, for which we are very grateful. 

The main challenge we have faced is having to plan courses that start and finish in the same location every week. As previously mentioned, keeping consistency of location is important for retaining and gaining interest, but that does lead to the issue of having to plan different courses week on week and ensuring that they remain interesting and fun. Another challenging aspect of the planning is ensuring that courses are of a suitable level for newcomers whilst also providing enough challenge for the experienced orienteer who wishes to participate. Whilst the main aim of the Orienteering Edinburgh events is to provide an enticing newcomer experience, it is also important to be welcoming to local club members as this helps provide connections to clubs and easier pathways for newcomers to become members.

Orienteering Edinburgh uses MapRun as its timing system as opposed to SI or EMIT. This requires less equipment so is easier to set up for low-key events in urban areas. However, it does have its problems as it relies on satellite connection to register that a participant is at a control. In built-up areas, the GPS signal can be lost in tall buildings, leaving participants with missing punches. We have been clear with our participants that this is not something to worry about and that they should just carry on around the course. We are able to reinstate all runners with a mispunch after the event before uploading results. MapRun is also set up with a default 15m radius around a control within which the control should register. This adds another element to think about from a planning perspective as controls can be punched over uncrossable boundaries or even from a wrong level!

From a marketing standpoint, our main difficulties have been in reaching outwith the already established orienteering community and establishing a successful strategy to entice those who have never participated in the sport before. Consistency and frequency of social media posts is a balancing act – not too much as to push people away, but also enough to keep our event constantly on people’s minds, which will hopefully encourage them to come along at some point. Regular posting also requires a constant supply of high quality photos and relevant content, which is not always easy to get a hold of.

Orienteering Edinburgh plans to run events every week until WOC2024 in July. We are also hoping to branch out to hosting events for local running clubs as part of their weekly training sessions in order to engage more newcomers and especially those with relevant interests. To keep the Thursday lunchtime events interesting and different, we plan to mix up the format for some weeks, with current ideas including a mass start score race alongside the standard linear format for beginners or those not interested in being competitive.