Books & Spoken Word
Freedom Through Football
Launch event to mark the release of the new edition of Freedom Through Football which tells the story of the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls, and to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the foundation of ‘Britain’s Most Intrepid Sports Club’.
The book has been fully revised and updated with an extra chapter to bring the story up to date.
In the summer of 1992 just as one revolution was starting to unfold in English football with the advent of the Premier League, a group of amateur players from inner-city Bristol were about to embark on a very different sort of journey. Few of that original team could have predicted that it would be one that would take them to a low-level war zone in Mexico, cricket games in South Central LA and dusty pitches in Palestine. Nor that the club would end up being able to raise over £100,000 for fresh water systems and other good causes around the world.
Or that they would be accompanied on this unlikely odyssey by ski-masked Zapatista rebels, rampageous netballers, can-can dancers and (for a while) an upand-coming young street artist named Banksy.
Long-standing team members Will Simpson and Malcolm McMahon are your guides to the punk-inspired club that has shown that sport can build a vibrant community and be a vehicle for political change, as well as a way for ordinary people of all ages to have a lot of fun with their lives.
Balls, Barriers and Bulldozers, a documentary film made by Bristol-based camera operator, Easton Cowgirls footballer, and editor Harriet Hoare, which recounts the team’s journey to Palestine in October 2014 to play football across the West Bank, will also be shown.
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