How a social enterprise uses football and digital media to bring the problems and perceptions of homelessness into play.

Homelessness—one of the world’s most intractable, wicked problems, which is compounded by poor awareness and great stigma—affects millions of people worldwide. Combining an event involving a globally recognised sport—football (soccer)—and an array of digital media tools and techniques, the Homeless World Cup (HWC) offers an innovative, multi-platform model to reimagine homelessness and the perceptions that surround it. The 2017 tournament will take place in Oslo (Aug 29–Sept. 5). It will be the HWC’s 15^th edition.

The HWC was devised by The Big Issue (Scotland) editor Mel Young and fellow street paper editor Harald Schmied, from Austrian street paper Megaphon, at a street paper conference in 2001. Frustrated at being at an event about tackling homelessness with no homeless people present or able to speak for themselves, Young and Schmied decided to create a conference that did. The first iteration took place in 2003 in Graz, Austria.

In the face of obvious language barriers, Young suggested a football tournament on the grounds that the world’s most popular sport needs little translation. The result is a pioneering social movement, disguised as a football tournament, that advocates for the end of homelessness. During the HWC some 500 players participate, making up teams from over 70 countries. Played on tennis court-sized pitches, the tournament is fast, furious and entertaining. It is nothing if not a transformative event that enables homeless and marginalised participants to build relationships and become teammates who learn to trust and share. Players have a responsibility to attend training sessions and games, to be on time, to be prepared and to participate. They are encouraged to, and often do, feel they are part of something larger than themselves. Where its focus is on health, fitness and social inclusion as well as housing in its efforts to tackle homelessness, the HWC empowers. Being involved helps people realise change, and that there is support and encouragement available to do so. As a sporting exemplification of The Big Issue’s edict, the HWC offers people ‘a hand up, not a hand out’.

The tournament’s use of social media, which includes live commentary of matches via its Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube channel, has become increasingly sophisticated and made the tournament exponentially more accessible. Indeed, outside of the venue and those directly involved, online is arguably where the tournament has its broadest appeal and greatest impact.

During and between tournaments an army of organisers, advocates and volunteers ensure an internationally dispersed audience can keep up with news and stories as they emerge. Matches are live streamed via Facebook and videos are archived for re-watching and re-living the best moments. These videos are popular with players, families and friends alike and often act as an adrenaline-inducing touchstone for players to remember the tournament long after they return home, often to challenging situations as they work to improve their lives. Some of the top teams, who take the football as seriously as the issues the tournament works to tackle, analyse the videos to gain insight into their opponents.

But while football is obviously a large part of the event’s focus, the sport gives way to the participants and their stories. These stories are shared across a range of platforms (developing concurrently to the event itself) by football-fans but also by audiences who are not fans, and even some who would not normally consider themselves advocates for the homeless. The affordability and accessibility of social media and smartphones enable players to first see and spread (see Jenkins, Ford and Green (2013)), then add to, the stories that are written about them. (While smartphone access and ownership is not traditionally associated with people who are homeless, mobile phone coverage is in fact almost omnipresent. An estimated 95 per cent of the world’s population—or approximately seven billion people—have access to at least a 2G mobile phone network, and people in both developing and developed nations prioritise access to communication technology. Worldwide, 44.9 per cent of women and 51.1 per cent of men worldwide use the internet, with figures for the developed world as high as 80.0 and 82.3 per cents, respectively (International Telecommunication Union 2016, 1–3). Additionally, the HWC team managers and support staff bring smartphones and other internet-enabled devices such as iPads to the event, which players can use to access social media. This ensures that all players can participate both on the pitch and in the virtual world.) In fact, any slowness in uploading match videos is often met with coaches chasing the media team to enquire what’s taking so long. Players ask when and where the feature articles written about them will be posted so they can look out for them and share them among their own networks. Similarly, high quality cameras embedded in smartphones have enabled tournament players and participants to share images and video content of their HWC experiences—there is not the same heavy reliance on others to capture their stories to validate or preserve them.

This organic social media-based approach to telling and sharing stories embodies two key elements. There is empowerment and great traction in this low-budget, ‘Jenkins’ take on transmedia storytelling, in which each part can stand alone and engage different audiences across different platforms, while simultaneously contributing to a larger whole. And, it realises Young’s and Schmied’s aim to have people who are homeless and marginalised tell their own stories rather than being the subject of other peoples’ stories.

The largely digital nature of the content enables errors (such as those obtained through translation issues or misunderstanding) to be quickly corrected, often in real time—something rarely available to people about whom stories are written. And given that the players, coaches, family, friends, HWC community and the general public is actively involved in and following the event online (including those who are attending the event itself), the HWC is the reference or focal point for the production and distribution of stories, often collating and sharing content from other publications and users. Indeed, the tournament plays out like the traditional transmedia mothership in a story that seeks to address a significant social issue and its myriad challenges. Essentially, the football tournament acts as the core element, and the tournament launches smaller, related content and narratives from and that connect back to this source. Players and the wider community encounter, guide and redirect these content according to their own needs and interests. The model, as a social enterprise and its use of football—particularly its presentation of participants’ personal narratives and the affordances each offers in this innovative reimagining of homelessness—has been touched on, critiqued and examined across a range of perspectives (Sherry 2010, Magee 2011, Magee and Jeanes 2013).

While one of the most common observations—‘These people don’t look homeless’—is made by those who stumble across the event in the host city and those who encounter it via their social media feeds, people are universally intrigued. Co-founder Young considers the piqued interest an opportunity to have an open, informed discussion about homelessness. He asks people ‘if they think homelessness is a good idea?’ The answer is universally ‘no’. He asks the observer ‘what they think homelessness looks like?’ And ‘why they do not think the players look homeless’. He talks about what his definition of ‘success’ in tackling homeless looks like. When Brazilians Michelle da Silva and Darlon Martins were awarded professional football contracts, it shone a spotlight on their football skills, but for Young, the best examples are not about the football. He once encountered a bus driver who said, ‘Hello, Mel’. Young didn’t recognize the driver, but he was, it turned out, a former player who had returned from his HWC experience and found stable accommodation, obtained his driver’s licence, full-time work, and was engaged to be married. ‘To me, this illustrates what this is about,’ Young says. ‘Because to me, it’s not about huge, dramatic moves or spectacular, Walt Disney stuff. It’s simple things. And that’s all we can do.’ The result of such conversations is invariably a deeper understanding of homelessness, its causes and its solutions, and an impression that remains with people who encounter the event long after the event’s final games are played.

The impact on many of the player’s lives has been significant, finding homes and jobs is just the start. Some 97 per cent of HWC players report positive outcomes from their participation in the event. They find stable accommodation, employment, undertake study, and reconnect with family and friends when they return to their home countries. Digital media proves invaluable in this reintegration process and ongoing positive outcomes. Online content remains an accessible archive and powerful reminder of the event’s value. It also provides dynamic links to the friendships and support networks forged through the event—be it with other participants who have also experienced homelessness and marginalization, with HWC volunteers and staff or the general public. This network offers encouragement and empowerment to help participants improve their home-country situations.

Liverpool Football Club’s Bill Shankly famously said: “The socialism I believe in, is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how I see life.” The HWC embodies this philosophy, and in doing so counters the stigma traditionally attached to homelessness.

Like football, social media is a great leveler. When paired with the HWC, a common cause, they work together to achieve something rarely done for homelessness: it makes tackling this wicked problem engaging. Cheering the players on, whether from the stands or via social media, while simultaneously enjoying a fast-paced sporting event, makes addressing this larger issue far less arduous, not insurmountable. As research demonstrates, people who engage with causes online are likely to engage with them offline too (Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication and Ogilvy Public Relations 2013). Over the HWC’s history, digital media has gone from being new and undetermined to integral and ubiquitous. With platforms such as Facebook continually adding spreadable, drillable elements to augment reach and effect, the HWC’s impact through digital media is set to continue and grow.

A dozen different cities have already hosted, including Copenhagen, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. It returned to Scotland in 2016, where in host city Glasgow it also inspired a brilliant and moving collection of short fiction, Home Ground, edited by Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan (available for free). The community is gearing up and raising funds for Oslo. Teams are being announced in local street papers. It would be lovely if you could make it, but know that you can help just by checking your phone.

References

Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication and Ogilvy Public Relations. 2013. The Dynamics of Cause Engagement. Washington DC.

Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press.

International Telecommunication Union. 2016. ICT Facts and Figures. Accessed October 10, 2016.

Young, Mel. 2014. Author–Activist Interview.

www.theanfieldwrap.com/2016/09/corbyn-quotes-shankly-liverpool-football-socialism

I’m always disappointed when I see a band play the song the way I heard it in my living room. Whether it’s in a pub, a concert hall, or giant-sized festival stage it has to be more than a listening experience. I want something I can raise up and pour over my head. It’s not just for my ears. Like a Hobnob in a hot brew, I want to dunk all my other senses in it too. I want to mangle the lyrics of songs I’ve (partially, sometimes horribly) memorised and hurl them back at the artist. Call me greedy, but I want value for the time and effort taken to nurture that small but necessary bit of love. I want to see the band play, feel the bass in my chest, and taste the joy, or sorrow and everything in between. I still have Charlie Burchill’s guitar pick from a Simple Minds concert. I know exactly where I keep it and where and when I got it, but couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to one of their songs in earnest (though finding the link did make me nostalgic).

I love reading. Screen, page, cereal box, it matters not. I throw myself at it. If a story expects me to get off my arse and engage with it in its own environment, there better be good reason. Locative literature, the name most commonly given to in-situ story telling, takes the reading experience and lets the reader wallow (or paddle, depending on the story) in the physical dimensions of its setting. Locative literature is, as you would expect, a synthesis of characteristics of oral story telling traditions, city walks, and serialised fiction. These stories aim to take their reader to the place and time and drop them in it.

Regardless of their nature, great stories want for the same basic elements: characters, conflict, premise, plot, and so on, but they all happen some where at some time. Setting is an all-encompassing must-have in storytelling. Well-crafted settings carry the reader to their world, inspire emotional tone, and affect the characters – they can also take a dramatic role. At the very least, even when it doesn’t really matter (I’m looking at you Edgar Allan Poe and your Tell-Tale Heart), a story has to happen in a place. If the reader engages with the story in that particular place, there has to be more. And fortunately, in most cases, they usually do.

Locative literature projects can cast long shadows on the pavements tread to get through them, where others will disappear in the space of a frosty breath. I’m going to tell you about some now. It feels sexy to say I’ll be taking you to New York, Edinburgh, Oslo and Melbourne, but in doing so I will only highlight the classic premise and fundamental tension in locative literature – it really is one of those things when you have to be there.

Today, the practice of presenting a story in its most relevant physical environment, and augmenting it with digital tools and techniques, has become inordinately sophisticated. Take [murmur], an audio documentary project that collects and presents stories told by residents in specific locations. Launched in Toronto in 2003, the project spread to Vancouver, Montreal, San Jose, Edinburgh (2007), Dublin (2007), and Geelong (2009). Using mobile phones and a website, it captures locals’ experiences of a locale. Places you’ve been or recognise are given pinpoint depth and texture. The project seems (quite unfairly) antiquated alongside contemporaries such as Craig Mod’s Hi, with its stylish sophistication and reach (you may also like Jonathon Safran Foer’s Cultivating Thought, but they do the same thing, bring a very personal view of the world to your doorstep.

In this context [murmur] is hardly old. Locative literature has, Jason Farman argues, been around since Christian pilgrims began walking the Stations of the Cross. Before disruptive tech even opened the door to physical/virtual interplay, a plethora of variations were popular. From Jane Austen’s Bath to Greenwich Village, Lonely Planet regularly update their literary walking tour guide. Their list does not include the Secret Edinburgh tour (by Rebustours), which juxtaposes Ian Rankin’s hard-drinking detective’s best with works of Sir Walter Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson. Thanks to sneak peaks from forthcoming novels and irregular but frequent appearances by Rankin, the tour was, for a little while at least, the second most popular tourist attraction in Edinburgh, after the Castle. The combination of settings and the added extras proved deliciously attractive to the crime writer’s expansive fan base.

Edinburgh is also home to imaginative variations of the form. Ghost Walks, or their thematic relatives, can be found in many cities and tourist destinations – the famous cellblock audio tour of Alcatraz is just one example. Whether literary, religious, historical or supernatural, these walks tend to have a guide (even if its an electronic one) and often draw on elements of physical theatre to imbue dynamic sense of drama to their locative and literary nature, such as actors in Roman costumes; paid performers reading the relevant author’s poetry; and dressed up ‘ghosts’ flitting through shadowy graveyards. These works are most commonly driven by enterprise, celebration (spiritual or otherwise), or entertainment – or all three. Sarah Winter’s performance artwork, Library for the End of the World attempted to catalogue and curate a database of participants memories through a growing library of cassettes in Brisbane’s West End. It is a serene example of a work that offered an experience beyond the orthodoxy of enterprise or entertainment.

When Matt Blackwood, an artist, writer and innovator (and personal professional crush), says he uses his work to connect to the reader, he is referring specifically to the level of physical immersion locative literature can offer. Graffitied walls and stale odours take on new significance when a short story is read to you in one of Melbourne city’s famed laneways and alleys. In Blackwood’s 2011 project, MyStory, listeners were led to the setting of a short work by author Tony Birch where they listened to a 5 minute reading. When the story was complete, the small crowd stayed in the alley to talk, touch the bricks, and experience the space with a new perspective. In 2012, for 2Stories, Blackwood linked two three-minute audio stories to bold and beautiful QR codes (see below), decorated with elements of their stories, and hung them next to a studio that used to be a restaurant – he connected a story set in each through two characters.

It’s a strange and wondrous feeling standing in the street listening to a story set in a building you can lean against. In Rita Raley’s discussion of mobile narratives, she notes a story’s engagement with the physical, the material, and the lived space in functional terms and the inherent risks in those same stories denying, or worse, losing sight of the social or political aspects. This is an aspect Blackwood works hard to overcome in these and other works.

While locative literature can be ephemeral and that its impermanence is also part of the attraction of the form. There are long-term works, which take a particular location and build on it, and others which encourage readers to stay longer. Ben Russell’s 1999 Headmap Manifesto highlighted incredible prescience in its encouragement to readers to think about space and location as opportunities for gathering and placing information through interaction with personalised tech (he went as far as suggested use of a proto-Google Glass). Designed to reveal ‘hidden’ stories of the city of Oslo, Anders Sundnes Løvlie’s Textopia was an experiment in facilitating public contributions to an experimental story system. This approach drew in collaborative writing, turned found texts into literary compositions, and sought exploration of place through the act of writing. The resulting work was positioned to read as a form of situated, poetic documentary on an urban textual environment. It required substantial time in its place to engage with the work. No discussion of locative literature can close without mention of Eli Horowitz. The writer followed his collaboration (written under the pseudonym Gus Twintig) on The Clock without a Face with The Silent History. The story of the emergence of a generation of children who would never read or write stands foremost in the canon. Where The Clock without a Face sent readers scurrying across the continent on a real-life treasure hunt for hand-made jewel-encrusted numbers, The Silent History was developed as an iOS app filled with uploaded testimony of its characters and GPS-responsive segments that are switched on where the reader lands in specific locations, such as Chicago’s O’Hare airport or a neighbourhood in lower Manhattan. It has since been cemented in hard copy, which while capturing the whole story for convenience and removing the frustration of never being able to get to New York to try it for yourself, removes the work’s primary purpose.

The Story City project delivers Choose Your Own Adventures through an iOS app, which overlays real environments with fictional tales (full disclosure: I’ve worked on two separate projects). Stories are currently located in Brisbane, Adelaide and the Gold Coast, Australia, where the project partners with local councils. Stories are often purposed as a form of cultural tourism, highlighting specific places such as newly (re)developed parks and laneways, the project encourages the reader to think about familiar spaces in different ways and challenges them to play more active roles such as solver and explorer to follower and leader (Mike Jones highlights even more when he discusses interactive storytelling). Story City stories are serialised or chaptered, have a designated start and finishing point and are often in second person to achieve an immediacy that is much rarer in hard copy fiction. In terms of setting, the narrative moves quickly across interspersed short bursts of text that contain explicit direction to the next point, puzzle or narrative event – a map is often provided too. While a dark, atmospheric short fiction can easily lose its impact in the bright Queensland sun, or turn into a rain soaked unintended nightmare – mobile phones and water don’t mix well – the literal race across an urban park moves the story from the individual reading in a comfy chair to a energetic social exercise.

Locative literature offers those rare elements to reading that the book (I am a little loathe to say) cannot, the possibility of, for example, continuing exploration in a landscape like Textopia, where the specific terrain of the text grows and changes with each contribution. The form occupies the liminal space between reader engagement and play. Some works, those created by Horowitz and curated through Story City, look to facilitate the participants’ travel through the landscape of their works, offering a physical experience, which can change with each read. Others are anchored, but still question the readers’ experience, their engagement with the text and its physical place. The writers noted here use setting as the key element of great storytelling and their augmentation of their work through the possibilities offered by the physical environment and available tech, underline the value in enriching the reading experience. Good locative literature should give you more, it should at the very least, give you the dunk and let you take the pick home for your efforts.