Football, intergenerationality, and place-based community connectedness in post-industrial English towns

The project will inform world-leading public policy research, conducted in the UK, on the future of towns; reimagining place; cultural placemaking; and the levelling up agenda, by providing the first comparative sociological investigation of two post-industrial town-based football clubs as place-based communities in contemporary northern England, using a qualitative framework of 60 multigenerational biographical interviews and fieldwork methods. It will build upon the PIs work on active football fans and generational consciousness, by unpacking how disparities in intergenerational opportunities and attachment to place in two of the most deprived towns in Lancashire and North Yorkshire: Blackburn, and Middlesbrough, and external economic pressures facing town-based clubs outside of the top Premier League division, intersect at the community level.

In most towns across the UK, the local football club remains an important institution. Many of these ninety-two professional clubs are over one-hundred-and-thirty-years-old, created by local people. As the disproportionate impact of the pandemic has laid bare, football's ecosystem in England is incredibly fragile, and the pyramid league system is pervaded by unsustainable business models. Many local economies are reliant upon match-day attendances as a source of income, and growing divisions between Britain's towns and cities have also created a dilemma for the governance structures of football seeking to represent very different parts of the country. It is estimated that around twenty-per-cent of English Football League clubs, are currently 'living a hand-to-mouth existence'. These are, in many cases, the same post-industrial, former ship building, and coal and steel mining towns which, by majority, voted to Leave the European Union, driven in part, by those who have felt 'left behind' by post-1990s economic growth.

This project emerges at what is a critical juncture for the future sustainability of Britain's most popular pastime, in the wake of Brexit; Covid-19; renewed threats of a breakaway European Super League; and a political interest in neo-localist ideas seeking to put place at the centre of political thinking. In football, following the recent publication of the UK government's Fan Led Review of Governance and Sustainability White Paper in 2023, a renewed focus on community is emerging, seeking to use the game as a tool to embed, and structure, local, democratic, supporter engagement, to regulate, and safeguard, heritage, and civic pride, and improve the long-term sustainability of clubs and their local communities. In partnership with local government; the voluntary community sector; and national football supporters' organisations, we seek to extend knowledge of how post-industrial supporter communities are constituted, and the intergenerational experiences and meanings of place as a key marker of belonging and identity, and apply this knowledge to influence the emerging neo-localism sector in England, to recommend policies and strategies to strengthen social connectedness, community resilience, civic participation, and pride in place.

The research will reach diverse beneficiaries including 1) public sector community integration and engagement teams in our two locations); 2) individuals, groups, and organisations currently involved in, or considering roles in other areas of, community engagement and placemaking; 3) key stakeholders in other football community-related work (e.g., football community trusts and foundations; and leading supporters' groups at the two clubs); 4) policy-makers with an interest in placemaking and localism; and 5) other football supporters' groups and organisations currently involved in supporter [community] engagement work and heritage projects.