Roundtable discussion – The role of football and public services as community builders

Roundtable discussion – The role of football and public services as community builders

In order to discuss the issue of exclusion and how we recreate a lost social contract, representatives from Swedish Elite Football met together with Public Housing companies, Economist Ingvar Nilsson and Leif Magnusson, operations manager at Local Unesco Collaboration Sweden.

We observe that societal strategies are often created around exclusion, which is mostly about the calls for more police, camera surveillance and guards. The perspective is often very short-term and most focused on the acute symptoms and manifestations.

Karin Heri, responsible for public relations at Swedish Elite Football

In 2020, Swedish Elite Football, together with Ingvar Nilsson, Eva Lundmark Nilsson and Jesse Kemppinen, released the report “The football pitch in the middle of the village”. The report identifies that there is an incredible force in football’s social work, gives examples of the effects that clubs’ efforts have, and shows that it is crucial with cross-sectoral cooperation – to create a bearing triangle of public, private and civil society .

Sweden’s modern welfare society was once built by the popular movements, of which football is one. SEF has members from Trelleborg in the south to Östersund in the middle of Sweden, and several clubs operate in so-called particularly vulnerable areas where exclusion is large, and the gaps even larger.

Non-profit housing companies are said to be the most important tool for a socially sustainable housing policy and an important tool in breaking segregation and exclusion. With that in mind, Swedish Elite Football together with Ingvar Nilsson, who wrote the Football Plan in the middle of the village in Local Unesco Collaboration, and several public housing companies in the municipalities where elite football is played, gathered for a roundtable discussion.

We have identified that there is one or more non-profit housing companies in all clubs’ immediate areas, and that there are already good examples of collaborations between these.

Few talk about the importance of building social capital and strengthening the glue that holds society together – the social capital that builds societies. During the roundtable discussion, we wanted to know more what the meeting participants think about this.

Beatrice Clarke, sustainability manager at Swedish Elite Football

The participants felt satisfied with the meeting and that they got a lot out of it, not least that football is a unifying force.

The conversation was an eye opener for me, to see what capacity there is in club life and in Swedish elite football at the end. An untapped capacity was demonstrated over the fine initiatives that have been taken in football and succeeded with children and young people in every way. Football has a unifying force, not least in this forum, in residential areas and it will be exciting to see what we can take for granted and what we can do about it. This is very interesting and very important.

Christian Kylin, CEO of Falkenberg’s housing company FABO

Ingvar Nilsson was also pleased and shares his thoughts for the future.

Our basic social contract was built over a long series of years by, among others, our popular movements, the sports movement, the popular education movement and our non-profit housing companies. That is how the welfare state grew. Today, our society is exposed to a number of destructive forces, not least in the so-called vulnerable areas. Here today, both the public good and the sports movement are doing great things to break this destructive pattern.

Now is the time to take the next step and shift up the process. We need to create alliances, strategic alliances, between these good forces in society in order to stop violence in partnership and reduce exclusion. It is done in many places in the country and the opportunities to take this a step further are good. For the benefit of both parties but above all for those who live in these areas and for society at large.

Ingvar Nilsson