Keynote: A History of Word Cup Posters 1930-2014’ Future Football: a design for life

Abstract

The game has never been more popular than it is today. The opinion of the fans within a stadium has moved from a post-match analysis on the radio, listening from home or in the car, into different modes of communication. Football is consumed and prosumed in both offline and online life. The places now range from discussions debated in pubs across tables, to within watsapp groups, on Facebook and through the multitude of football blogs – at the tips of our fingers. In fact fan groups are now merging the acts of consumption and production and generating businesses based around football. Furthermore, we have not mentioned the saturation of media productions available. Web 2:0 technology and global media have made football accessible again (albeit not the same as when you could bump into Peter Osgood at the height of his fame in a local pub in Windsor). Footballers have a range of social media platforms to engage with fans, referee’s have Twitter accounts and the Premier League now aim to deliver football and physical education is every English Primary School. Football is part of everyday participation. Yet behind the looking glass there are huge issues that will dictate its future. European economic downturns, policy driven austerity, the destabilising of the traditional European powerbase to the Global South, corruption throughout the game from the highest level to grassroots. These are the times that will dictate the path of its future. The purpose of “Future Football: a design for life”, is to discuss these issue, challenges and opportunities and as a group collectively debate this agenda and add an academic rigor to, perhaps only slightly, enrich the game and ensure it takes the moral inclusive path. The conference does not set out to be a mainstream academic conference. But it is about discussing academic research that (i) is being proposed as a potential option for the collective group to understand an existing context or tackle an existing issue (ii) is being planned you intend to undertake, for feedback on proposed methodological questions, (iii) has been undertaken, to share findings and gain insight and feedback on data analysis, representation, potential journal outputs or (iv) has been published, to share findings and discuss future research needs. Importantly, the conference aims to help generate a collective critical mass to support the academic study of football. The conference should be about moving forward and creating collective action and collaboration, whether on referees, players and agents, policy, funding, pitches, stadia, finance, management, governance or playing styles and more. Essentially the conference should be grow organically in terms of agenda and discussion. The conference is designed to offer opportunities for all to present research, research ideas, potential projects, innovative methods of data collection or public engagement. The agenda is very much set by the group.