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2019 Project Play Summit

Note: This is a past event, additional resources may be available below.

Sep 17 – 18 2019
Detroit, MI

Date

Sep 17 – 18 2019
8:00am – 4:00pm

Location

Detroit, MI
Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center

Contact

    martin.fox@aspeninstitute.org
    202-464-4304

Hosts

  1. Sports & Society

The Project Play Summit is the nation’s premier gathering of youth, sport and health leaders. Select Summit sessions will be livestreamed on this page Sept. 17-18 from Detroit. The livestream schedule is listed below.

Tuesday, Sept. 17 Livestream Sessions

8:55-9:15 AM – Ask Kids What They Want: Meet the UnretiredModerator: 

Cassidy Hubbarth
Panelists: Betsy Pringle, age 10, Birmingham, AL
Tanaya Mullen, age 12, Detroit, MI
Daniel Solomon, age 12,  Urbana, MD
Navonne Love, age 10, Los Angeles, CA

Recorded Video Coming Soon

9:55-10:25 AM – Sports as Social Fabric, with David Brooks and Tim Shriver
Moderator: Ranya Bautista, Project Coordinator, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
Panelists: David Brooks, Executive Director, Weave: The Social Fabric Project
Tim Shriver, Chairman, Special Olympics International

1:25-2:10 PM – Design for Development: Hoop Dreams at 25 – Is Youth Basketball Any Wiser Now?
Moderator: Jon Solomon, Editorial Director, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
Panelists: Peter Gilbert, Hoop Dreams Filmmaker, Wake Forest University
Chris Webber, Former NBA All-Star, Turner NBA Analyst

and

2:10-2:40 PM – Emphasize Prevention: How to Truly Reform USA Gymnastics?
Moderator: Emily Stets, Program Associate, Project Play
Panelists: Valorie Kondos Field, former UCLA Gymnastics Coach
Wendy Hilliard, Wendy Hilliard Gymnastics Foundation

3:55-4:30 PM – What I Learned in Youth Sports, with C. J. Anderson
Moderator: Pat Forde, Yahoo! Sports
Panelist: C. J. Anderson, Detroit Lions Running Back

Wednesday, Sept. 18 Livestream Sessions

9:00-9:50 AM – Featured Conversation: Sport for Social ChangeIntroduced by

: Lex Chalat, Beyond Sport
Moderator: Kyle Martino, NBC Sports
Panelists: Mariona Miret, FC Barcelona Foundation
David Egner, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation

11:20 AM-12:00 PM – Think Small: Making It Happen in a Big Way
Moderator: J.J. Tighe, Director, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation
Panelists: Byron Brown, Mayor of Buffalo
Arn Tellem, Vice Chairman, Palace Sports & Entertainment/Detroit Pistons

3:20-3:50 PM – Call for Leadership: The Role of Government in Driving Systems-Level Change
Moderator: Tom Farrey, Executive Director, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
Panelists: Janet Fulton, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Jocelyn Benson, Secretary of State, State of Michigan
Matt Wright, Task Force Member, State of Play Hawai’i

Placeholder

Detroit to Host the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Summit in September; First Speakers Announced

The fifth Project Play Summit will take place September 17-18 at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, MI. Speakers include Chris Webber, Valorie Kondos Field, David Brooks, and Cassidy Hubbarth.

2019 Project Play Summit Sponsors

The Project Play Summit is the nation’s premier gathering of youth, sport and health leaders. Select Summit sessions will be livestreamed on this page Sept. 17-18 from Detroit. The livestream schedule is listed below.

Tuesday, Sept. 17 Livestream Sessions

8:55-9:15 AM – Ask Kids What They Want: Meet the UnretiredModerator: 

Cassidy Hubbarth
Panelists: Betsy Pringle, age 10, Birmingham, AL
Tanaya Mullen, age 12, Detroit, MI
Daniel Solomon, age 12,  Urbana, MD
Navonne Love, age 10, Los Angeles, CA

Recorded Video Coming Soon

9:55-10:25 AM – Sports as Social Fabric, with David Brooks and Tim Shriver
Moderator: Ranya Bautista, Project Coordinator, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
Panelists: David Brooks, Executive Director, Weave: The Social Fabric Project
Tim Shriver, Chairman, Special Olympics International

1:25-2:10 PM – Design for Development: Hoop Dreams at 25 – Is Youth Basketball Any Wiser Now?
Moderator: Jon Solomon, Editorial Director, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
Panelists: Peter Gilbert, Hoop Dreams Filmmaker, Wake Forest University
Chris Webber, Former NBA All-Star, Turner NBA Analyst

and

2:10-2:40 PM – Emphasize Prevention: How to Truly Reform USA Gymnastics?
Moderator: Emily Stets, Program Associate, Project Play
Panelists: Valorie Kondos Field, former UCLA Gymnastics Coach
Wendy Hilliard, Wendy Hilliard Gymnastics Foundation

3:55-4:30 PM – What I Learned in Youth Sports, with C. J. Anderson
Moderator: Pat Forde, Yahoo! Sports
Panelist: C. J. Anderson, Detroit Lions Running Back

Wednesday, Sept. 18 Livestream Sessions

9:00-9:50 AM – Featured Conversation: Sport for Social ChangeIntroduced by

: Lex Chalat, Beyond Sport
Moderator: Kyle Martino, NBC Sports
Panelists: Mariona Miret, FC Barcelona Foundation
David Egner, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation

11:20 AM-12:00 PM – Think Small: Making It Happen in a Big Way
Moderator: J.J. Tighe, Director, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation
Panelists: Byron Brown, Mayor of Buffalo
Arn Tellem, Vice Chairman, Palace Sports & Entertainment/Detroit Pistons

3:20-3:50 PM – Call for Leadership: The Role of Government in Driving Systems-Level Change
Moderator: Tom Farrey, Executive Director, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program
Panelists: Janet Fulton, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Jocelyn Benson, Secretary of State, State of Michigan
Matt Wright, Task Force Member, State of Play Hawai’i

Placeholder

Detroit to Host the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Summit in September; First Speakers Announced

The fifth Project Play Summit will take place September 17-18 at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, MI. Speakers include Chris Webber, Valorie Kondos Field, David Brooks, and Cassidy Hubbarth.

2019 Project Play Summit Sponsors

Placeholder

Project Play Summit 2025

The Project Play Summit is the nation’s premier gathering of leaders building healthy children and communities through sports. On March 24-25, Project Play heads to the Bay Area — the first time the event has been hosted on the West Coast and a world-renowned center for innovation, just the kind of setting leaders from across sectors need to unlock the ideas and innovations to better serve youth.
Placeholder

Project Play Summit 2024

The 11th annual Project Play Summit took the Project Play network to Baltimore, Maryland – the site of the Sports & Society Program’s first State of Play report released in 2017. We reflected on the work accomplished, the learnings there and across the nation since then by innovators, and charted next steps in building healthy communities through sports.

Future of Sports: Luka Dončić on Future of Basketball

On the eve of NBA All-Star Weekend 2025, the Sports & Society Program spoke with NBA star Luka Dončić about his experience growing up in Europe, and explored recommendations in a new report by his foundation with a panel of experts as part of its Future of Sports conversation series.

Future of Sports: Olympic Reform in the Public Interest

Created 45 years ago during the height of the Cold War, the Sports Act needs to be updated. It’s hard to conclude otherwise after reading the final report of the Commission on the U.S. Olympics and Paralympics. From unchecked athlete abuse to declining youth sports participation rates, our sport system has been shaped by fundamental flaws in the design of the Sports Act. How should the Sport Act be reshaped so the Olympic & Paralympic movements serve the public interest?

Future of Sports: College Sports Reform in the Public Interest

The national conversation around NCAA reform has centered on two parties: revenue-producing athletes and the universities they play for. But big-time college sport is not an island. It sits on top of and influences the shape of a much larger ecosystem, youth and school sports, which has been transformed over the past generation by the chase for scholarships, preferential admission slots for recruited athletes, and now NIL opportunities. So how to get the new model right? How to reform college sports in the public interest?

Future of Sports Journalism

Sports both reflect and shape our society. Journalism unpacks those relationships, along the way making the games that we play more interesting and relevant. The New York Times, HBO Real Sports, and Los Angeles Times helped set the standard. Now, each outlet is changing how it covers sports – and Real Sports ended after 29 award-winning years. What happened? And what does the future hold for enterprise and investigative journalism in sports? Could the public get less, or more, coverage of important topics as the media landscape evolves? What are the most promising business models to support this work? And what do we lose if longform sports journalism gets deprioritized in a streaming world?

Future of College Sports: Special Admissions

Race-based preferences during college admissions are gone, jettisoned by the Supreme Court. Now universities are under pressure to drop favorable treatment for donors and children of alumni. But what about recruited athletes, whose admission advantage far outstrips any of the above categories of student? At Harvard, for instance, the chances of getting in move from less than 1% to 86% if coveted by a coach. Can special admissions for recruited athletes be preserved? Should they? Our panels explore the societal implications of preferred treatment of athletes, from the contributions they make to campus life to the downstream reshaping of the youth sports industry, and considers: What treatment makes sense now?

Future of Sports: Protecting High School Athletes After Damar Hamlin

At the Super Bowl, the NFL honored the 25 medical personnel who saved the life of Damar Hamlin. Many high school athletes are lucky to have even one athletic trainer on site during games and practices. What if Hamlin’s survival served as a catalyst to get every high school athlete access to an athletic trainer? And, where that’s not possible due to financial or personnel reasons, what other options exist to save lives and care for young athletes’ health?

Future of Sports: Grant Wahl’s Legacy

The future of sports is dimmer without soccer journalist Grant Wahl, who died last week at age 49 while covering the FIFA men’s World Cup. But there are lessons from his work and life that anyone can take forward to build a better world. On Thursday, Dec. 15 (12-1 pm ET), we distill them and take measure of the legacy of the trailblazing writer on soccer, sports journalism and countless lives he lifted along the way.

Project Play Summit 2023

Join our Project Play network of leaders as we design a better future.