Change Starts In The Changing Room

Every day, girls across the UK are opting out of sport, not because they don’t want to take part, but because of what happens before PE lessons even begin.

Our research uncovered a hidden barrier: one in three secondary school girls skip PE because of the thought of using school changing rooms. Spaces designed without them were quietly pushing them out, with long-term consequences for confidence, wellbeing and lifelong health. “Change Starts in the Changing Room” set out to make this invisible issue impossible to ignore and to prove that listening to girls could unlock real, scalable change.

Rather than relying on a traditional research-to-policy model, we took a creativity-first approach. We launched the findings through an emotionally-led film designed to travel across social and media, and invited girls themselves to redesign their changing rooms through a national schools competition, turning lived experience into practical, buildable solutions.

This combination of storytelling and co-creation generated powerful content, media moments and tangible proof, culminating in a surprise £10,000 grant, awarded by Denise Lewis to bring the winning school’s vision to life.

The campaign achieved 81 pieces of coverage across digital and broadcast, reaching national audiences and spreading internationally — with reporters as far afield as Singapore picking up the story, driving engagement with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). As a result, the campaign’s research was cited in the Government’s Game On report, which recommended improving privacy in changing rooms to encourage sustained participation