We were really pleased to welcome 110 people to City of Glasgow College on Friday 28th October. This included participants from the Erasmus+ project Sporting (S)Equals who joined us on the day and shared best practice, spoke in workshops and met with sport and physical activity stakeholders from across Scotland. Upon arriving, all delegates were greeted by LEAP staff and volunteers and given a pack with agenda and information about speakers and workshops. You can read the agenda and biographies of speakers on our website here
First up a LEAP Sports welcome from the Chair of the Board, Keith Wimbles, followed by a few words from Iain Houston, Associate Dean of Sport and Fitness at City of Glasgow College. Iain highlighted the importance of introducing inclusion of diverse sport into all physical education and welcomed the conference to the college campus where the future of sport are being taught.
After years of supporting LEAP Sports through the stormy waters of covid-19 and EU withdrawal, Keith's retirement is now just around the corner. That means LEAP are now recruiting for a new Chair of the Board and you can see more information here. Thank you for your dedication and support Keith!
The opening remarks continued with a video message from the Scottish Government Minister for Public Health, Women's Health and Sport - Maree Todd.
LEAP Sports Execute Director, Hugh Torrance, provided the conference with some context and reflections about the current landscape of LGBTIQ+ inclusion in sport.
"If all we do is focus on the stuff that affects us personally and not the cultural or structural issues, we'll never get change"
About representation and industry groups: "We would love to see fan groups starting up in other sports than mainly football. Rugby, we are coming for you next!"
Hugh finished up with this reflection: "A lot of conversations are around regulations and policy. Let's change that. Let's start talking about how we get more people playing and participating in sport."
For the keynote on equality & human rights for LGBTIQ+ people in sport, we welcomed Madeleine Pape, who joined us virtually.
Madeleine is a sociologist of gender at the University of Lausanne. Her expertise is unique in combining a PhD in sociology (University of Wisconsin-Madison) with her background as an Olympic athlete, having competed for Australia in Athletics (800m) at the 2008 Olympic Games. Madeleine’s work is also informed by her experience of racing against Caster Semenya at the 2009 World Championships. Madeleine has been engaged by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since March 2022 to support the rollout of the IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion, and Non-Discrimination.
"We cannot reduce this to science alone. Research is important to the topic of inclusion, but there is so much more at stake that we need to take into account for the wellbeing of athletes that are directly impacted."
"We often hear we must choose between fairness and inclusion, as though they can't co-exist. That is simply not the case. Fairness and inclusion can be achieved by policy making."
Access Madeleine's presentation along with others from the day here
In the first (of two) parallel sessions, we had 5 workshops/panels for attendees to choose from. We have managed to collate some pictures and key messages from most of the sessions to make up for the fact there were so many to choose from.
Developing community outcomes through sports events
Speakers included Sarah Townsend, speaking about EuroGames and Jon Holmes about Pride House Birmingham as pictured.
We were also pleased to be able to include input from Ivan Tarapčík and Andrew Stamp about their experiences in using events to reach specific groups.
Sarah spoke about how having an event such as EuroGames where clubs could compete has had a big knock on effect of people establishing LGBTIQ clubs across Europe to be able to take part.
Sport & Physical activity for trans and gender diverse children and young people
Speakers as pictured: Javier Gil and Marta Claver sharing experiences from their Valencia based project Samarucs. Pictured below is LEAP's very own Kelsey Ann Caldow highlighting the positive effects of the LEAP Family Group in supporting Glasgow families with gender diverse children.
Dr. Heather Wood - Clinical Psychologist also joined this session adding context about the detriment to young trans people if they don't have access to sport and physical activity.
For more information about the LEAP Sports Family group see here
LGBTIQ+ changemakers in sport
This workshop explored the different ways of affecting change in sport. Speakers included Andy Paul, founder of Athletics Pride Network, Rhiannon Hughes from Ibrox Pride, Esraa Husain speaking about the LEAP Sports Trans Active project and Andrej Pišl from Out in Slovenia.
Andy Paul said: "If we can get clubs to stop treating inclusion as a target and treating it as a culture, we'll go a long way"
Including non-binary people in sport led by Dr Sone Erikainen from University of Aberdeen
Sone recommended: "Build a culture that allows mixed opportunities to be an option. That will help us see mixed teams as more normal."
As part of this workshop, Sone covered potential barriers to participation before asking participants to come up with possible solutions to different scenarios involving non-binary people in sport.
Check out the slides from Sone's presentation here
Equality, human rights, FIFA and Qatar - where are we? Panel discussion with Pia Mann, Lou Englefield and Piara Power chaired by Scott Cuthbertson. Unfortunately, we were too busy listening to this engaging conversation to snap a picture. The panel explored the areas of concern around human rights and the upcoming FIFA men's World Cup in Qatar and whether meaningful change is possible and how it might come about.
Interview with Zander Murray by Jon Holmes from Sports Media LGBT+
Zander plays for Gala Fairydean Rovers FC and recently after coming out, became the only out gay footballer playing in the Scottish men's game.
This interview was an open and honest conversation between Jon and Zander (with an audience) and it did feel like a conversation between friends with plenty of laughs and RuPaul quotes but also scattered serious moments.
Zander said: "Nobody gives you a rule book when you come out. For me, it took such a long time. I just slowly told people. I trusted my gut - I haven't done that in the past. The positive messages I've had - Tom Daley was a shock! Why would an icon message a wee guy from Glasgow who is just trying to play football?
Homophobia in Scottish Football: What's the score?
For our afternoon parallel sessions, attendees had the choice of 4 different workshops. Here starting off we had Lloyd Wilson, Zander Murray, Emma Porteous and Amy McDonald on a panel chaired by Munro Stevenson keeping score of recent developments within the Scottish game.
Within the panel there was a general consensus that as much as you might get homophobic fans, the general fan is inclusive and progressive. Emma Porteous noted that football has an incredible outreach and that isn't always understood. The role of those involved in the game should be to use the sport to affect change from within.
Improving LGBTIQ+ health and wellbeing through physical activity and sport
This session included an exciting blend of data insights into the health and wellbeing needs and experiences of LGBTIQ+ people alongside thought provoking practice experience contributions.
Dr Heather Wood set the scene while Nicky Coia provided an overview of the outcomes from the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Needs Assessment of LGBT+ people (report here). David "Dirk" Smith" followed this with his presentation on psychological impact of LGBTIQ discrimination in sports. Check out the video of his presentation here
Engaging with trans people to improve participation in sport
This session was kicked off by Dr Andrew Harvey from Swansea University providing an updates on the DATES project, followed by Blair Hamilton sharing her presentation on including trans people in research and policy making.
We also heard from Martin Muñoz and Lea Marie Uría from Seitenwechsel about their Charter for Gender Diversity in Sport. Read more here
LBTI Women in Sport
Sarah Townsend from EGLSF led an interactive workshop with this group to consider and explore some of the key issues women and intersex people face. Sarah was joined by Pia Mann (pictured) from Discover Football.
Pia: "Football can be a very inclusive sport - or it should be. But the 'normal' gender for football is male..."
"This intersection of sexism and homophobia goes together. The perception is that women who play football can't be real women, they must be a lesbian, while male footballers can't be gay"
We were wowed by all the inspiring content presented at the conference and we have had numerous requests to share the presentations from the different workshops. To access them all please follow the button below to a shared Google Drive folder where you'll be able to access the slides.
Thank you to all of you who attended the conference, presented or contributed otherwise. We at LEAP Sports appreciate your continued support and we are already looking forward to invite you to future LEAP events, so please stay in touch!
Finally, as part of funding from the Scottish Book Trust we invited Jules Scheele to do a live illustration of the conference. This was an incredible piece of work by Jules which was engaging to watch but is also just an amazing resource to be able to utilise as we reflect and digest the content of the conference.
Thank you to Jules for your hard work on the day. Please check out his website below for more incredible illustrations