ISCA’s #BeActive FlashMOVE raised the curtain of the European Week of Sport opening ceremony today at 11am with local children from Kosice inviting the crowd surrounding the stage to join them in Europe’s biggest simultaneous flash mob.

The event was streamed live on the #BeActive website and is now available to watch on demand via Twitter and Facebook. Footage of FlashMOVEs around Europe appeared on social media throughout the day, with cities in Malta, Belgium, Croatia, Greece, Denmark, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Spain and the UK showing their moves in their own celebrations.

The Journey of Hope team also starred in the official proceedings, first joining the morning’s Retro Bike Fest and then being invited to the stage to meet EU Commissioner for Education, Culture Youth and Sport, Tibor Navricsics.

The Commissioner donned the cross-border cycling tour’s green jersey and congratulated them on their “impressive” journey through seven countries in four weeks.

During the opening ceremony speeches, Navracsics said they key message of the European Week of Sport was “to make physical activity a part of your life and ignite change for the better.”

The FlashMOVE, Journey of Hope and other EU supported events at the ceremony came together as a culmination of the Erasmus+ programme’s funding stream aimed at boosting grassroots sport initiatives that get ordinary citizens moving.

Silvia Costa, MEP and chair of the committee for Culture and Education in the European Parliament, said the events typified her committee’s determination to put grassroots sport on the EU agenda.

“In our committee, the Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Sport we have struggled in two directions. First of all, it is a very important result, we struggled a lot to have inside Erasmus+ the new multi-annual programme that you know so well. Also for the first time a line dedicated to sport associations and to grassroots sport," she said.

“The second message we are preparing, a very important record in Parliament, are these three objectives. First of all the integrity of sports; the second one is accessibility for everybody in spite of their age, disabilities or other [barriers]; and the third for the transparent governance of sport. These are three values that we have to fight for in the whole of Europe.”

A second FlashMOVE performance is set to take place at 7pm in the centre of Kosice and the ripple effect of the dance is expected to continue around Europe even though the simultaneous event has now reached its crescendo.

The next major simultaneous event on ISCA’s European Week of Sport calendar is the European Fitness Day on 15 September.