Changing the Chants: Combatting anti-Semitism in football

20 May 2021

The Changing the Chants project is a collaboration between Borussia Dortmund, Feyenoord Rotterdam, the FARE Network, and the Anne Frank House. Recently they have release a documentary and a good practice compendium guide on how to combat anti-Semitism in football. Changing the Chants is a EU-funded project that addresses anti-Semitism in football through education, as well as throug rememberance projects. The goal is to deepen the understanding of approaches that football clubs can use to educate fans on antisemitic behaviour in the football stands. Changing the Chants builds upon two separate educational programmes for football fans, run by Borussia Dortmund and Feyenoord. These educational initiatives, although not similar, are exchanged and analysed, and new approaches are piloted, paving the way for practices in which restorative justice is applied.

This project fosters to open a space for shared learning, transnational and cross-context piloting of these approaches. A group of European contributors, stakeholders from various backgrounds with a high level of expertise, contribute to this process and assist the partner organisations.This team seeks to find and analyse more similar approaches across Europe and publish them in a compendium of good practices. Furthermore, the insights of the piloting, exchanging and compendium help to create practical and transferable guidelines and recommendations for football communities, and football clubs in particular all over Europe and beyond. Both these outputs will be disseminated through a series of multiplier events across Europe and a final conference in 2021. Football communities seeking to combat antisemitism through non-formal education will thus be able to develop their own meaningful programmes and to prevent and respond to manifestations of antisemitic hate-speech. A dedicated website will stimulate cross-border exchange and cooperation.

Compendium Guide

As mentioned, the Changing the Chants consortium found and analyzed other apporaches to targetting anti-Semitism in European Football. Among the projects that are highlighted in the compendium are the SayNoToAntiSemitism campaign from Chelsea FC, educational programmes from FC Utrecht, Feyenoord Rotterdam, German Football League, SC Aleviten Paderborn, as well as remembrance and Commemoration programmes from Borussia Dortmund, First Vienna FC 1984 Supporters, AC Milan, Werder Bremen Fan Project, AFC Bournemouth, Ferencvaros FC and more. The compendium can be downloaded via chaningthechants.eu or via this link.

Documentary

SOURCE: changingthechants.eu