In my work to develop new research and innovations to support amateur football clubs achieve Net Zero, I have been focussing on a new project. The idea is in its early stages but has attracted a number of clubs and researchers to come forward asking to participate in multidisciplinary approaches take climate action and reduce carbon emissions.

This project has the aim of trying to capture different views of how rising global temperatures concerns them and how it will affect their communities. 

The initiative aims to capture the views of young people living in different, often difficult contexts, and empower them to tell their story of their concerns for global warming and the future they want to see. 

It also asks people what they want to do about it the crisis. It has a working title of ‘the Hidden Voices of Climate Change’ but I think this will change to reflect its link to amateur sport.

Community participants will act as ‘citizen scientists’, to voluntarily helps conduct the research.

They will help design investigations, collect data, analyse results, and solve problems and sharing their stories and their opinions.  

A number of DMU researchers from disciplines including Psychology, Education, Politics, Engineering, Health, Mental Health and the arts will take part.

A network of multidiscipline researchers at various stages of their careers have also come forward to participate from around the world.  

We are working with academics from Leicester, Germany, Spain, Nigeria, Malaysia and The Gambia to develop plans to move forward

The project will create a multimedia website to attract more researchers from around the world (and the UK) to work together.

Since we have started the project in August 2022, we have had many universities and football teams asking to participate. 

As a result, we have been able to connect universities to community teams in their relevant localities.

Numerous cross-disciplinary researchers have all expressed interest in engaging with the project and developing new fields of investigation. 

The website will be loosely based on the successful ‘Humans of New York’ concept: https://www.humansofnewyork.com/about. which tells stories of people’s lives in a compassionate way.

The project addresses concerns that the climate debate and subsequent social action is being driven by class, geography and race, often excluding voices outside of the mainstream. 

 All community partners have agreed to participate to create content and become ‘citizen scientists’ and this is the first of many activities to develop new knowledge to tackle climate change.