Young Foundation

ABSTRACT This article explores the social life of amateur football at the Hackney Marshes in London. Based on a season-long period of participant observation, the article looks at the different registers of social and cultural life achieved through the practice of playing amateur Sunday League football. Studying this everyday amateur sporting scene in detail highlights how communities of practice are made, and how focusing on shared activities can shed new light on how the public life of cities can be more than a community of strangers. The article also contributes to the emerging literatures on social infrastructures showing how spaces like sports fields can support the development and maintenance of social connection. This case study highlights how the social life being observed cannot be separated from the practice of playing football, and that if we want to facilitate the realization of more abstract values in urban environments – e.g. community, cooperation, kinship – then it is necessary to provide the kinds of social infrastructures that make it easier to take part in activities together.

The Young Foundation, supported by The Wellcome Trust, is conducting a real-time inquiry into how Covid-19 is affecting interactions between individuals, experiences of community, and how trust in both science and health research are shaped. Between August and December 2020, we are capturing a cumulative long-term perspective, with particular focus on the ways in which trust and understanding are shaped among different groups, and the role and influence of digital.While a growing body of quantitative evidence explores changing social attitudes and behaviours, the lived experience of individuals and communities is often separated from these statistics; this project gives individuals the opportunity to reflect on, and document their lived experience of Covid-19 so that we may better understand the relationships between lived experience, beliefs, perceptions of truth, and accumulation of knowledge.An innovative approach brings together 140 participants on an online qualitative platform to complete weekly digital diaries, creative arts-based tasks, photo and video submissions, and quick polls among others, to provide insights on various issues as the situation evolves. We have also trained 15 Peer Researchers through our Peer Research Network, who are deeply embedded within their communities, to conduct bi-weekly telephone interviews with 30 digitally excluded individuals.The methods used enable a highly interactive, flexible and participatory approach in a fast-evolving context. The combined approach ensures that we are capturing diverse voices and viewpoints, allowing us to create a representative picture of what is happening around the UK as the pandemic continues to unfold.We will share insights about how trust in different sources and types of information evolve over the period as the UK faced a winter of local lockdowns, and the role of local communities in challenging and reinforcing those views. We will also reflect on the strengths and challenges of participatory research during this period.

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