I have been lucky to have been involved in Project FIAS, fostering inclusive action sports with Dr Fiona Spotswood and her team at Bristol University. Sharing the learnings and successes of girls ALIVE to help build a toolkit for other orgranisations and groups to get more women into MTB.
Fiona got in touch to ask if I would go to Bristol to be part of a panel discussion after the watching of Game on: The unstoppable rise of womens sport with the director and author Sue Anstiss. A documentary of her book. Sue works tirelessly to promote women's sport and speaks to some amazing women in her podcast - The game changers. Her charity is Fearless women,
Also on the panel was Aoife Glass, International women sport, Aneela - Mordiversity, and Jean Williams, author and expert in the history of women in football and sport.
To watch the film in the presense of those who were part of it was something special. There were students, and professors and advocates in women's sport and mtb and fellow gAer Heather had come along with me as well. A local school had sent their GCSE PE students along to be involved and hear the discussion.
The film is hugely emotive and poignant showing some key moments from women's sport in the last few years and sharing the history of women in sport. Disucssing some of the challenges and importantly asking what is next?
It feels a very exciting time in sport and the progress in areas like women's football and rugby becoming more mainstream and stadiums filling up with spectators as the sport grows in popularity. But Jean was cautious to not celebrate every small win for there is still far to go, no women have their own stadium and many of them don't play at the same one's as the men. This is an opportunity to build women's sport in a way that isn't about emulating men's sport but to do it differently.
And the same can be said of MTB, to strike our own path, to do it our own way. The project has been a great deal of work with some amazing people in the world of MTB and womens sport and the workshops and roadshows are coming up where Fiona will present this to the parties involved such as British Cycling, Forestry England etc. I am super excited to see how it is received and taken and used to better support women in MTB. It is looking amazing!
Follow the progress here: https://fias.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/
Zoe - girlsALIVE