Alive and Kicking

Header image: St Pauli tifo LGBT support (2016) Witters/Tim Groothius. June 2022 marks the 52nd LGBTQ+ Pride month since the ‘holiday’ – initially a celebration and demonstration of proud queer identity that grew out from American marches commemorating the 1969 protests at Stonewall – was adopted worldwide. We’ve talked about LGBTQ+ history in football before (and can now add the cheering editor’s note that in the mere 5 months since that article was written new history has been made, with the second active professional footballer ever in the UK to publicly come out). However, this month, we’re thinking more generally about that concept, “pride”. Most obvious in the context of football is pride in your team. What started as a very simple celebration of community identity – with people generally supporting whatever team they happened to live closest to – has developed into a sophisticated system of costume (scarves, colours, face paint), chants, slang, even literature (with fanzines and their online versions becoming ever more refined and widely read). The symbolism involved can be internationally and instantly recognisable, or subtle enough to be noticed only by those ‘in the know’.  Fans are in control of what they are proud of and how they show it, and show it they do: they gather in groups to publicly protest official choices as happened after the renaming of “Hull City AFC”, or individuals may take existing symbols of team pride and make them entirely their own. The latter was very popularly done by drag queen Bimini, who assembled an outfit to watch their home team, Norwich FC, for a ‘hometown pride’ runway. Of course, it cannot be ignored that like pride itself, there is a negative side to fan culture. Racist and homophobic language, for instance, have historically been loud and widely accepted within the football community. The “hooligan calling cards” of the 70s are an aestheticised window onto the sometimes-lethal lengths to which fans (“fanatics”) would take their team pride. Both these things may well stem partly from football’s specificity as a platform for both national pride and (particularly male) competition, “war without weapons”. However, this is also why it is so important that the game’s potential for identity and community building, as well as emotional release for groups often given little other public outlet, are respected and used for more positive means where possible. Nevertheless, football has a unique ability to provide community and comfort to people – pride in identity and community, the right to be part of a group, to feel good about themselves and have fun – which should not be overshadowed. This includes LGBTQ+ people, with hundreds of queer- and trans-inclusive teams all over the world, but is an idea that can and has expanded to include just about anyone. Women’s football, after being marginalised and actively forbidden for most of the 20th century, has become one of the most progressive and inclusive professional sports in the world (particularly for LGBTQ+ people, in fact). There are grassroots teams specifically for refugees, for newcomers to a given area, for people with disabilities, for older players, and more. Even where groups are not yet included in the mainstream, they can use the worldwide “language” of leagues, team colours, crests, and the game itself to celebrate their identities under their own terms, as demonstrated by CONIFA (the Confederation of Independent Football Associations; “nations, de-facto nations, regions, minority peoples and sports isolated territories” not included in FIFA). Both pride and football have at times been used maliciously, for negative impact. Neither is innocent and neither should be engaged with uncritically, but they can both be powerful tools for togetherness, communication, and joy. We at Alive and Kicking hope that our own work, working with communities around the world, can stand alongside the many people and initiatives briefly mentioned in this article as an exemplar for how we can be proud of and within football. We can both play and celebrate the game and promote inclusive, multifaceted, intersectional pride (and, of course, Pride) not only for ourselves or our teams, but the whole sport and its ever-brighter future. Images sourced with the help of the Design Museum, currently showing ‘Football: Designing The Beautiful Game’ until 29th August, where visitors can see both the Hillsborough Memorial Banner and the Corbin Shaw banner pictured above.

Help create happier, healthier more empowered communities by driving the growth of Alive and Kicking’s new sales offering. The Role Historically, AK have sold sports balls in the markets in which they are made. Sales in these regions will continue but increasing global demand for high quality ethical products has led to the exploration of new markets. AK’s global sales have grown organically by over 325% in the last year alone which has shown there is clear potential for significant growth over the coming year. The AK Sales Manager has the opportunity to establish Alive and Kicking as a competitor in both the gift and sports market, driving both partnership engagement and sales. Put simply, the more balls AK sell, the more ethical jobs we can create and the more young people we can give access to sport and vital health education. How to Apply Please read the job pack (downloaded by clicking here) and send your CV and a covering letter (no more than two pages long, addressing how you meet each point on the Person Specification) to applications@aliveandkicking.org by 5.00pm on Monday 11th July 2022. Interviews are planned for the week beginning July 18th and will take place either in person or online. Alive and Kicking reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible. If you have any questions about the role, please call our office on 020 7686 9852 and ask for Ben Sadler. Thank you for your interest in the role and enabling Alive and Kicking to create happier, healthier more empowered communities. Job Pack Download

This month we had a chat with Jean-Baptiste de Tourris (not pictured above!), co-founder of Vista and one of Alive and Kicking’s recent collaborators in generating impact throughout the world through football. So, first things first, what is Vista? Vista makes footballs in Marseilles, in the south of France. I would say we have an ambition to give back meaning to football, like Alive and Kicking is doing – it’s a great example for us and a great inspiration. How long has it been going so far? My wife, Agathe, had the idea two years ago. I wanted to buy a responsible football, but there was nothing like that in France. Then we talked to an engineering school near Lyons about making an ecological football with a social impact. We worked for six months on a research project with 12 final-year students, thinking about what is a football, how we can recycle and ecologically produce one. And then 18 months ago, we met with Ben [CEO of Alive and Kicking]. How did that come about? So we got the conclusions from the research project… and the conclusion was that it’s not possible to sustainably eco-produce a football in France. Of course I was very unsatisfied so I wrote – in so many languages, thanks to globalisation – and Googled, and YouTubed; I watched videos from Pakistan, and India, and China, and I found a video of Alive and Kicking on YouTube, explaining what they were doing. And I thought wow, this is something very interesting. I looked on LinkedIn and I added Ben, and I emailed him. Two hours later he replied to me – that’s the beginning of the story! Could you expand a bit on what it is exactly that Alive and Kicking does with Vista? At the beginning we wanted to do everything in France. After we met with Alive and Kicking we tried to make the panels in France but it’s very hard! [laughs] Then we tried just to stitch them in France. But hand-stitching here ended up costing far too much, so we tried to stitch with a machine, but it’s not the same, it’s not as strong. So in the end, Alive and Kicking is doing the first part of the job – stitching 80-90% of the ball, so the body is open leaving 20cm that we stitch in France [after inserting the bladder]. This takes 45 minutes to do, once an employee has been trained for 3 months. Of course in terms of efficiency it’s nonsense, we could stitch the entire ball in Kenya and make a higher profit. But we don’t want to do that, we want to work with Alive and Kicking and we want to create jobs in France. So we have this part and we are very proud of it: it helps people here in Marseilles to find a job and reintegrate into work. There are many factors in measuring environmental impact, but most people think of the carbon footprint. So: a normal football sold in France produces 7kg CO₂. Thanks to the engineering school, we measured this impact for a Vista ball. With full transparency, with the bladder coming from India and body coming from Kenya, and transport to France by plane, we still only have a carbon footprint of 3.2kg CO₂. With higher quantities we will be able to transport by boat, and this will bring the footprint down to 2.3kg, almost a quarter of a classic football. So was the original idea to make a social impact or to be environmentally friendly? Agathe and I work with disabled people; having a social impact is very important to us. At the beginning we didn’t have the environmental part of the idea. But we learned so much from this research project. Maybe because a football is such a common object, as consumers we don’t ask questions: what is a football, where is it made, what becomes of it at the end of its life? We ask questions a lot about food for example, or clothing, so brands have to move. But for footballs we don’t, so brands don’t have the will to change. They have this model, you know, it’s less than 3% for the people working, making the balls, and 30% or more for profit. To my mind, when the customer doesn’t ask for anything, the brands will continue doing what they’re doing. If you want to have a social impact, and if you want to give jobs to people, you can’t do it by creating more waste, more inequalities, or more bad impact on the environment. And the people working have to be happy and have to be proud to work. If you work for a product where the lifetime is like one week and then it’s waste, it’s in the landfill … people don’t connect. Who are the people working with Vista? From the beginning we wanted to work with people currently far from jobs; in France we say “reintegration”, social and work reintegration. We don’t have a lot of funds and we don’t have a big company helping us, so we’ve been working with a group who are authorised by the government under a scheme helping companies to employ people who find it difficult to get work, often due to disabilities. You have two years with these people, part paid by the government, to help them “reintegrate”. After the two years, they will have completed their professional reintegration, and we hope we will be able to give them the option of staying on for a long term job with us. With this group’s help in January we hired Hourik. He comes from Syria, with his family – he has four kids. He was making shoes in Syria, and was then looking for a job in France. He is highly motivated to work and he loves footballs! With Hourik stitching for us we sold almost 500 footballs in one month. Now we want to

Ball libraries for happier, healthier communities Since June 2020 Alive and Kicking, with the support of Sport England, Better, and the Postcode Lottery Trust, has been running an England-wide ‘ball library’. The idea is for young people to borrow a football, play with it, then bring it back. There’s no cost and minimal monitoring by the ‘libraries’, making it an exercise in mutual trust that not only helps people to access equipment they may not be able to otherwise but forges stronger links between individuals and communities. Why are the ball libraries important? First and most obviously, physical activity and play are both vital to your health and happiness. There is a discrepancy in access to sport in the UK which has been worsened by COVID, which in turn means there is a widening gap in mental and physical health, self-esteem and confidence, and time spent outside and independently playing with peers (see Sport England’s Active Lives surveys 2020-21).  To help tackle this, our libraries aim to minimise barriers to play. They’re free to use and encouraging participants to take part on their own terms. We’re delighted to report that this has enabled us to bring football to those who likely would not have access otherwise: over 80% of participants live in the top third of the most deprived local neighbourhoods. As we learned from the drop in physical activity and overall happiness levels over the early pandemic when schools were closed – resulting in a compounded version of ‘the holiday gap’, when young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are significantly less able to partake in sport and more likely to experience social isolation, and in turn to suffer low mental and physical health – it is absolutely vital to reduce barriers to active, social play. Another outcome is that the ball libraries make people more aware of, and more inclined to use, other services provided by the spaces they are hosted in. Right now these include libraries of the more traditional kind, youth and community centres, and various charity and council spaces. Demographics who are less able, encouraged, or otherwise likely to access sport (notably those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and certain ethnic groups) frequently face similar barriers to formal services such as these and often actively distrust them, so anything that brings local people into the space and helps build confidence is welcome. On top of this, participants naturally spend more time in local pitches, playgrounds, and parks as they play – all green spaces shown to be linked to better mental and physical health (see Public Health England’s report Improving Access to Greenspace). Data gathering at the ball libraries is minimal, partly to prevent participants being turned off by the faff of answering lots of questions, but also to avoid what may be perceived as intrusive tracking or surveillance. However, based on the strands of demographic data we do have, many of our participants likely fall along the intersection of those groups most likely to face social discrimination and lack of care even from supposedly custodial figures such as police officers and school staff. 29% are Black (compared to the national figure of 3.3%), 71% male, and as mentioned previously 80% come from less affluent neighbourhoods. Indeed, we have received feedback that the young people borrowing our footballs are often pleasantly surprised that the ball library is free and largely unmonitored, indicating that in their experience this is unusual. At time of writing our ball loss rate is at just 1%, proving our confidence is well-placed. We hope that our ball libraries can demonstrate the potential of programmes which place trust in those often denied it – like the Aberdeen-based initiative #YesBallGames, which we were excited to partner with last year. If you are involved with a community organisation in a space you think might be right for the ball library programme, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch here!

Alive and Kicking x UNHCR impact report: sustainable impact and the refugee crisis Last year we partnered with the UNHCR to bring 5 young people’s football designs to life. The profit made from selling the resulting, limited-edition balls went into supporting refugees around the world, both through the UNHCR and through our own contacts in Kenya, where we will be able to give 8,550 young refugees access to 49,590 hours of play. In a month that has seen more eyes turn to the work being done (by the UNHCR and many others) with Ukrainian refugees, we hope that the data coming in from this collaboration can help us consider how, in a sadly ongoing and global crisis, we can all contribute to positive change in the long run. This month we’re thinking about sustainable impact, individual creativity, and solidarity from local communities extending through to the whole world; and how ‘making an impact’ can mean different things to different people. For Hala, Nadira, Skarly, James, and Gerald, it meant drawing their dream ball. For our team in Kenya – where this partnership helped support 54 full time jobs and, in turn more than 300 individual dependents – it means completing their education, gaining the skills and experience they need with Alive and Kicking to get to where they want to be while building a better life for their families, all of which ripples out into positive social and economic change. For Alive and Kicking and its supporters (that’s you!) it includes backing these employees, who come from vulnerable job groups in the areas we work including adults with disabilities, or with no formal work experience or formal schooling, as well as contributing to their local economy to drive long-term positive change for similarly vulnerable groups in the area. By working with other charitable organisations – from grassroots campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa to global organisations like the UNHCR – we are all able to combine and multiply our impact. That’s why collaborations like this matter.   Looking again at the way people have mobilised around Ukraine’s refugees shows us how collaboration can happen organically on a huge scale: we’ve seen groups and individuals from countries around the region come to help however they are able, with people housing strangers in their own homes, helping with translations and paperwork, even setting up emergency vet stations and pet-food supply stations for those fleeing with their animals. Worldwide, people from Africa and its diaspora have come together to support the large number of African students studying at Ukrainian universities in coming home safely. Protesters have gathered everywhere from Russia to London to the US to express solidarity with those affected. Ukrainians and their neighbours have come together in cities all over the world to make traditional crafts and food for fundraisers. All these examples show the importance of providing concrete aid but also of celebrating humanity (our pets and families, our identities, our cultures) in times of crisis. In the spirit of bell hooks’ “love ethic”, we can see that creativity, generosity, and community especially in the face of hardship are vital to sustainable and regenerative social change. With 4 of the 5 winners of the ‘#dreamball’ competition being refugees themselves, we’re grateful to have had such an opportunity not only to contribute to the struggle against the refugee crisis and to continue supporting our own employees, but also to have been able to showcase the hope and joy of these young people against huge odds. In a flourish perfect for sending off this month and to see all these ideas of creativity, joy, collaboration, and more come together with football, watch how the Japan branch of the UNHCR celebrated Nadira’s ball.