Eight young people, sponsored by the Arsenal x adidas No More Red campaign, have become youth provision gamechangers by taking part in the Anthropology By Communities (ABC) programme.
The programme, led by anthropologist and Islington resident, Dr Kelly Fagan Robinson (University of Cambridge) and is in partnership with Rosie Apperley (Octopus Community Network), Rory Cleary (Hornsey Lane Estate Community Association) and Adele Scott (Arsenal Football Club).
No More Red supported this project by providing financial support for the young people to travel to Cambridge, hosting the first session in the adidas box at Emirates Stadium and awarding the young change-makers with exclusive No More Red jerseys.
Throughout the ABC x No More Red collaboration, participants have learned different ways to witness other people’s experiences and tell their own stories with openness and respect, mapping the joys and challenges they have experienced both through Arsenal Football Club and slightly further afield in their own home spaces.
Over the six months of the project, the participants created a commentary on what ‘home’ means to them using photography, film, and audio narrative. They started with a workshop at the Emirates, naming Arsenal as a key home space. They then documented their actual homes, capturing things in their buildings, flats, and estates that they would like others to see, to make their spaces more visible and their local communities safer.
As part of the project, participants travelled to Cambridge on October 7, 2023 to share their work and to lead artists, academics, policy-makers, and voluntary sector leaders in workshops at the first-ever Cambridge CRASSH Institute inReach Youth Summit.
The objective of the day was to get potential decision-makers to think together with the young people about the ways that each of us might be able to support cultivating safer youth spaces, a key priority identified by the young people themselves. The event's outcome was that more than 40 people each committed to writing to at least one practical action toward making positive change happen.
To thank the young people who participated in ABC x No More Red, these gamechangers were celebrated at the Arsenal v Wolves Premier League game by being presented their own, all-white, No More Red Arsenal jerseys.
More information on No More Red can be found at arsenal.com/NoMoreRed and adidas.co.uk/footballcollective
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
