WHAT

Through combining action and reflection, the workshop uses sport to stimulate empathy and promote social inclusion in schools.

WHY

Many children experience the sports class as a very hostile environment. Dominant ideas regarding gender, ethnicity, physical ability and sexuality are reproduced in sport and physical education. Research shows that girls, children with disabilities, children with a bi-cultural background and LGBTQIA+ children are marginalised and/ or excluded in many ways during a sports lesson. The experience of exclusion within the class extends into other parts of school and society, therefore it is crucial to challenge and change it.

HOW

The workshop presents a series of alternative team sport games, composed of new tools, rules, uniforms, props and alternative sport fields. Put together, these elements function as tools for disorientation and reorientation, providing the players with an embodied understanding of social power structures and their workings. Topics addressed through this, include gender performativity, privilege, group dynamics, allyship and processes of inclusion/exclusion. Children experience how both societal and bodily norms are constructed within sports practices, and experience what it could mean to counteract these norms that are otherwise taken for granted.

→ See projects Multiform, Anonymous Allyship and Multiplayer Mode