Leisure centre

A leisure centre in the UK, Ireland, Australia (also called aquatic centres) and Canada is a purpose built building or site, usually owned and operated by the city, borough council or municipal district council, where people go to keep fit or relax through using the facilities.

Typical facilities

Facilities may include a swimming pool (many with water slide), large sports hall, squash courts, cafeteria, licensed bar, fitness suite, aerobics studios, outdoor grass and/or artificial pitches for football (soccer), hockey etc., a solarium, sauna and/or steam room.

Leisure centres in the UK and Canada are staffed by leisure centre attendants employed by the local council. They carry out a range of tasks to help and supervise people using leisure centre facilities and act as swimming pool life guards, gym instructors and coaches offering advice, motivation and expertise to users. Many of its functions may overlap with that of a community centre.

Leisure centres are also popular in Australia, where they are mostly privately operated but Government funded. In that country they are often also called Recreation Centres, or most commonly Aquatic Centres due to the swimming facilities being the most popular facility that is available.

Center

Center or centre may refer to:

Mathematics and science

Sports

Leisure

Leisure has been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. (1)

Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores and education. It also excludes time spent on necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. From a research perspective, this approach has the advantages of being quantifiable and comparable over time and place.Leisure as experience usually emphasizes dimensions of perceived freedom and choice. It is done for "its own sake", for the quality of experience and involvement.(1) Other classic definitions include Thorsten Veblen's (1899) of "nonproductive consumption of time." (2) Different disciplines have definitions reflecting their common issues: for example, sociology on social forces and contexts and psychology as mental and emotional states and conditions.

Recreation differs from leisure in that it is purposeful activity that includes the experience of leisure in activity contexts..

The distinction between leisure and unavoidable activities is not a rigidly defined one, e.g. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility. A distinction may also be drawn between free time and leisure. For example, Situationist International maintains that free time is illusory and rarely fully "free"; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them as the commodity known as "leisure". Certainly most people's leisure activities are not a completely free choice, and may be constrained by social pressures, e.g. people may be coerced into spending time gardening by the need to keep up with the standard of neighbouring gardens or go to a party to because of social pressures..