D8.1 – All Countries Report

Preface

The framework for the D.Rad project, D8.1, titled ‘Arts and sports as resolution media as a preventive measure and inclusionary practice’, explores how participatory arts- and sports-related-engagement are important in connecting partakers’ everyday participation with others, and that the enjoyment of art and sport activity might be understood as the building blocks towards a more just and democratic society (Matarasso, 2019). Arts and sports themselves are often seen as opposites in terms of cultural activity – a person who is good at one is not supposed to be good at the other. While, as activities, they are often seen in this binary fashion, there are still certain links between the arts and sport that help to enhance social connections and promote cultural citizenship (Long & Sandle, 2019). This report, therefore, demonstrates the potential of arts and sports for partnerships that bring people from very different backgrounds together to make better and more resilient collective futures through (1) relationship building and (2) narrative sharing. The work package implements collaborative initiatives that have a well-documented history of enhancing life skills such as interpersonal communication, resilience, and conflict management skills.

Sharing life narratives together through arts and sports activity opens up space for re-considering perspectives, and foregrounds the importance of being together in shared spaces, to help us to think differently, and to find better ways of working together to identify, investigate and solve our common problems. Spaces such as these offer opportunity for greater dialogue and the deconstruction of demonising tropes that continue to frame extremist and radical ideologies. Taken together, the artistic and sports elements of this work package recognise our differences, and commonalities, and endeavour to mobilise these in ways that can lead to deeper understandings of our very complex communities.

D.Rad project identifies the actors, networks, and wider social contexts that drive radicalisation, particularly among young people in urban and peri-urban areas, through its I-Gap spectrum (injustice-grievance-alienation-polarisation). Situated within the context of I-Gap, the D.Rad project places feeling of exclusion at the heart of the radicalisation processes of individuals. Hence, it proposes the importance of bolstering shared spaces that offer social interaction opportunities to those who gather
around a common interest. D.Rad project takes alienation as one of the components of an individual’s radicalisation journey. Alienation can be seen as one of the first steps of radicalisation as it causes isolation for the people who experience it. The phenomenon of isolation often follows feelings of injustice and grievance – the other key elements of radicalisation. Thus, for the D.Rad project, individuals who are affected by feelings of alienation, injustice and grievance become vulnerable to radical or extremist ideologies or movements.

Consequently, the D.Rad project, and this particular work package, offers ways to challenge alienation and isolation. The organisations within this report bring people from different backgrounds together in attempts to make better and more resilient collective futures through relationship building and challenging notions of otherness. D.Rad discusses sports and arts as a resolution media, and in this context, all reports of this work package reflect on the role of sports and arts in the context of challenging social isolation, disadvantage, and othering – and in turn, deradicalization processes. Throughout these reports, physical spaces where sports and art related activities occur will be considered shared spaces for people who have some similar interests. Spaces, where people can come together to create or play sport, already offer a sense of cultural democracy because they offer time and space to reflect, to imagine new possibilities and to connect. Therefore, arts and sports activities are considered as an intervention method across this WP partner countries. Project partners from all five countries, namely, Israel, UK, Poland, Slovenia and Serbia, where this work package’s activities occurred, participated with art or sports activities as intervention practices, and conducted focus group interviews with the individuals who participated in such events.

D.Rad project discusses how a radical individual’s deradicalization processes cannot begin without meaningful social interactions between themselves and the people that stand as the other to them. Consequently, they require a physical space where they can gather around a shared interest. Radicalisation finds its roots in different political ideologies making the D.Rad project approach the spaces that arts and sports activities provide as non-political environments where people can focus on the activities only. This is not to suggest that these spaces are completely ‘politics free’, given that both formal and informal everyday spaces where people meet can of course be understood as spaces where political discussion takes place: Libraries, hair-salons, sports clubs, museums, bus stops – are all places where people meet have potential for political discussion to take place. Nevertheless, insomuch as our organisational activities are concerned, they are, for the purpose and period of activity, viewed as politically free spaces. We value such environments as they tend to ease the political tension between people and give them a ‘safe’ space to act together. They offer a vital alternative environment where people can feel safe, can be themselves and can meet other people. D.Rad project therefore stresses the importance of dialogue in environments created by arts and sports activities. As this report will present in following sections, governments also consider sports as a medium in their deradicalization approach and often provide funding to sports clubs to support their social cohesion projects.

With regard to the country-specific contributions, the report from Israel explores sports and inclusion through a gender lens. The Israel report engages with an organization called Mamanet” (Netball league association for Mothers), and in particular with the Netball Team ‘Desert Foxes’. The report explores how female sports organisations across Israel can contribute to dialogue, collaboration, and everyday practices that create avenues for female sports and, in doing so, promote a position of empowerment and inclusivity for women and children. The report relies on empirical data drawn from a few sources, including empirical research exploring the relations between sports and society (behavioural psychology, criminology and sociology of sport), sports journalism articles, and information from official state reports. The report draws insights referencing the impact of sports in developing resilience to anti-social behaviours that can lead to gender violence and extremism. Israel experienced some difficulty with participant retention, and consequently did not complete the arts intervention aspect of their study. Israel, at the request of the organisation members, did not participate in ethnographic methodologies, but instead used digital media to connect with participants of the study.

Poland examines the social agency of members of ‘Wieczny Rakow’- the football fans association of club Rakow Czestochowa. This particular study examined sports engagement through a different lens, exploring football fans instead of participatory sports engagement. This unusual approach nevertheless provided similar findings to the other national studies in relation to the work package’s aims to reflect on the role of sports and arts in the context of challenging social isolation, othering and related power relations that can lead to alienation. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, two focus groups and an arts intervention, this report uncovers how everyday practices and experiences of ‘Wieczny Rakow’ create a framework around reconciling the grievances they themselves feel about being misunderstood as (violent) football fans, and how this can lead to them being viewed as ‘the other’, while also viewing themselves as ‘the other’. In order to explore how creative arts and sports can contribute to dialogue and collaboration, an art-intervention was piloted between the fans and researchers, that consisted of preparing a club banner for a game setting.

The Serbian report explores the impact of the ‘Boys Day (BD) programs in Serbia through analysis of the self-evaluation and evaluation of the program participants. ‘Boys’ Day’ – a weekly program run by Info Park NGO in Belgrade, Serbia, Boys’ Day – is designed for unaccompanied refugee and asylum-seeking boys, teenagers, and young adults. The report focuses on the impact of BD, particularly in terms of relationship building, fostering of peaceful co-existence between groups and by equipping participants to manage difficulties faced in their lives as migrants and refugees.

The report from Slovenia presents research conducted in Ljubljana on how the arts in particular contribute to social inclusion practices. The research examines how activities, organised in two artistic fields – Street Theatre during international youth exchanges, and Creative Dance and Movement within the Cycle of Creative Dance and Movement Workshops – foster resilience among youth residing in the region of its capital, Ljubljana. Data were collected through participant observation during Street Theatre and Creative Dance Movement activities, in non-formal conversations, during two Art interventions that included public performances and performances in front of other participants, and in four focus groups.

Lastly, the United Kingdom report outlines the main insights from the country, focusing on the key themes of collaborative arts and sports media as avenues to challenge ideas of othering and difference within communities. It explores how creative arts and sports can contribute to dialogue, collaboration, and everyday practices that create a framework around reconciling the grievances that can lead to radicalisation. The report demonstrates the potential for partnerships that bring people from very different backgrounds together to make better and more resilient collective futures. Following a desk report on the use of arts and sports as a means of social inclusion and potential deradicalisation pathways, the report highlights two organisations, Oddarts and Street Soccer Scotland, with the latter being examined in greater depth in the form of a short case study. The case-study organisation, Street Soccer Scotland (SSS), is an NGO that uses football-inspired training and personal development as a medium to empower people that are affected by social disadvantages, isolation, and marginalisation, and the report examines the practices of this organisation, its staff, and participants through the lens of the D.Rad IGAP spectrum.

The collaborative ethnographic underpinning of the research methodology ultimately meant that researchers worked closely with their organisations and participants to recognise avenues of best research practice for those involved in the study. This resulted in cases studies differing very slightly across the five national reports with regard to exact methodology. This can be both an advantage and disadvantage to research practices as it means that while participants of a study are given the time, respect and control within a study (to decide on methodological pathways), it also can result in slightly different methodological processes across multiple group research. While the approach may have differed slightly across the national contexts, the research underpinning remained consistent throughout. Such was the consistency of the theoretical and methodological underpinning, the data from these five national studies did elucidate similar findings in relation to challenging notions of otherness and social isolation through arts and sports related activity. In terms of the D.Rad I-Gap spectrum, WP8 showed that it is everyday social interactions at the micro level (during sports or arts activity) that challenge processes of radicalisation by interfering in the isolation-alienation aspects of the radicalisation process.

A sense of alienation, sometimes attached to fundamental injustice and grievance, is replaced by a sense of belonging (during initiatives, projects & collective activity), thus reducing loneliness and isolation of community members. Social interactions in the form of arts and sport activity that challenge and disrupt toxic narratives, as reported in this report, are those that consist of relationship-building strategies that shine a light on commonalities between people across all social borders and that explore how stories and narratives can unite or divide us. Within the report some participants speak of enjoying being with others whom they previously would have avoided, others admitted to becoming more familiar with their local neighbours/communities through their engagement with the organisations and activities. Opportunities to share stories and build relationships through sport or creative engagement offers common ground and safe spaces to develop tools to mitigate risks and provide a deeper understanding of how one’s own values, interests and life expectations are intertwined with their and others’ positions.

This concept of getting to know others through shared activity in a non-threatening environment derives from the idea that when people come together and talk about their lives, interests or experiences, they learn things about others that resonate with their own lives: they are able to see something of the other in themselves and themselves in the other. The organisations and activities documented in this report highlight how sports or creative engagement offer opportunity and potential to develop tools to mitigate risks of radicalisation, and a means of developing a deeper understanding of how one’s own values, interests and life expectations are intertwined with their own and others’ positions.