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The Offside Project is a community history project documenting twenty transmasculine people sharing their experiences playing, watching, loving, and building football spaces. From grassroots teams to playing for Manchester United, these vital, underrepresented stories were shared at Centre For Live Art Yorkshire in Leeds in July 2023, accompanied by a panel about the future of trans representation in sports.

Created by Marlowe Mitchell: Marlowe is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on trans and queer historical and community research, writing, and film-making. The basis for their art is to create cases for inclusion, to preserve, uncover, and challenge histories and culture, and to build connections between the community through time and space.

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The Offside Project originated when Marlowe was trying to find a football community that shared their experience, and discovering a dearth of transmasculine people. After two years of finalising, Marlowe got to chat with other transmasc people, building connections between our stories and what our futures can look like. During the interview stage of the project, the all-transmasculine football match on Trans Day of Visibility was played, changing the nature of transmasculine invisibility in sport spaces.

Most of the interviews took place over the course of two months, after which fourteen of them were edited into 15-20min audio-visual pieces shown in a gallery space on five different screens. Alongside the exhibition there was a sports-themed drag show featuring the artist and musician Ding Frisby, as well as the films Lotus Sports Club (dir. Vanna Hem)* and Who I Am Now (dir. Jack Goessens), both of which offer international perspectives on transness and sports.

The highlight of the event was a panel about transmasculine futures in football.** Each of the panellists gave a unique perspective on grassroots, professional, and spectator-based challenges in football spaces.** In addition there are interviews with Natalie Washington (Football v Transphobia) and Lucy Clarke (TRUK) about the work they do for the future of trans inclusive football.

*Learn more about Lotus Sports Club in Cambodia and to donate to its continued running
https://www.share-doc.org/d/23001

** Watch Full Panel Here

Credits:
Project Managing, Interviews, Editing/Subtitling/Transcription, Event planning and hosting: Marlowe Mitchell
Interview production (London): Rico Jacob Chase
Creative Producer: Kit Miles
Social media: Robyn Leadbeater
Panel filming and editing/subtitling: SABLE (Leeds)
Event managing: Jessica Sweet (Centre for Live Art Yorkshire)
Oral histories training: Laura Mitchison, On The Record
Archiving: Otherness Archive, Bishopsgate Institute, West Yorkshire Archive
Panelists: Frank Lamb, Caz Fields, Ingrid Banerjee Marvin
Thank you to: On The Record, REED, Laura Mitchison, Kate Holland, Mimi Kimmling, Orlen Crawford, Frank Lamb, Caz Fields, Ding Frisby, Tommaso Colognese, Jack Goessens, Emma, You Can Play, Team Out And Proud, SABLE, The Arts Council, Kit Heyam, Adam Kashmiry, CLAY, Sweatmother, Robyn Leadbeater

Funded by The Arts Council

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Offside Project

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