Dreams of Social Inclusion in Football: Practices and Ideas

The workshop titled ‘Dreams of Social Inclusion in Football: Practices and Ideas’ was held in partnership with İstanbul Bilgi University Gender Working Group, İstanbul Bilgi University Department of Sports Management, and Association for Struggle Against Sexual Violence. We organized an interactive event with the participation of different actors in the field to discuss inclusive football on October 17, 2019. In our event supported by the international organization FARE Network, we together discussed ways to go beyond regarding football only as a field of professionals and men. We organized different events in which participants such as Forum Theater could actively participate in the event, where we discussed future dreams together by strengthening communication between the groups. We invited women’s football clubs and teams, LGBT+I / queer football clubs and teams along with the representatives of academia and non-governmental organization working on and thinking about inclusive football. We aimed to contribute to the visibility of women and LGBT+I/ queer football clubs, and raise awareness, and broaden gender equality perspective on this issue.