Football Reading Group w/ Ashleigh Williams - Session 10: Before grime, never had a voice

About

Together we will be reading and using rap lyrics as a stimulus to discuss the lineage between football, community and prevalent topics within the arts community.

Please register to be sent the Zoom link, which you can also do by dropping us a line at info[at]againsttherunofplay.club or by sending a DM to @against.the.run.of.play.

Feel free to notify us in advance if you would prefer to attend as a ‘quiet’ participant, (with your camera/mic off). Please get in touch if you have any other questions, suggestions, access needs, or just to say hi!

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Reading/Listening

- From Pirate Radio To Glastonbury: Grime Music's Evolving Connection To Class by Jazmin Kopotsha, Refinery 29, 20/06/2019: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/grime-music-class

- Lyrics of 96 of My Life by Jme, 29/11/2019: https://genius.com/Jme-96-of-my-life-lyrics

- Grime isn’t just music - it’s about working-class struggle - and its new middle-class fans need to recognise the genre’s social importance by Poppie Platt, 17/12/2015: https://www.independent.co.uk/student/istudents/grime-isn-t-just-music-it-s-about-working-class-struggle-and-its-new-middle-class-fans-need-recognise-genre-s-social-importance-a6777256.html

Further Reading

- The Beautiful Grime: The best lyrics about football by Jagroop Shinbt, BBC Three, 19/09/2019: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/b4477724-04fa-44cd-90bf-8722f628d8ad

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Ashleigh Williams

Seeking to procure a more representative art world, Ashleigh Williams (she/her) creates art and facilitates events for those who are marginalised by their class, gender, race, and everything in between. With an emphasis on collaboration, mainly through their collective Babeworld, Ashleigh’s practice focuses on themes of political and societal identity, such as disability/ accessibility, mental health, sex work, ‘poverty porn’, and oversharing- otherwise known as attention-seeking on the internet.

Through collaborating with other underrepresented artists, Ashleigh cultivates networks to grow their online platform to fundraise and create grants for marginalised people and communities. Ashleigh has worked with the likes of East Street Arts, Montez Press, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, bringing their ideas and networks to relevant institutions and organisations in the art world.

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Football Reading Group

The Football Reading Group aims to map and give critical context to female engagement with football and sports culture more broadly.

Begun in February 2019, we meet on a semi-regular basis, with each session framed by an overarching theme. These range from socio-political questions around gender, race and capital, to thinking about spectatorship and the role of culture or friendship.

Those that attend the reading group are warmly invited to suggest texts and specific topics; the reading group operates as a discursive research tool that is shaped collectively and conversationally.

The Reading Group is open to all backgrounds and genders; footballer, artist, both or neither - we are interested in everybody’s contribution to the discussion. Info about previous sessions and reading can be found ​here​.