Gaelic Football Then and Now!
At Leeds Health & Homes, we have just completed a wonderful sporting heritage project, celebrating the fascinating and lively history of Gaelic Football in Leeds. A sport that has been such an important part of the Irish community in the city, GAA has largely gone under the radar in terms of being recorded historically and its uniqueness and importance in bringing the Irish community together has not been recognised. We hoped to start to change that with this project. We have recorded five fantastic oral history interviews, looking at the sport in years gone by, and now; we have run lots of reminiscence sessions with people who had not seen each other in years but were bound by the bond of the sport they love! And we have started to uncover what collections about the sport exist throughout the city, thinking ahead to how we might preserve these.
Generously funded by Sporting Heritage, we wanted to use this Community Grant to pilot the kinds of activities I have mentioned above. And we feel the concept has been proved. People got a lot from engaging in the activity that we put on, and we have already established a new Men’s Group on the success of this project. We feel this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of GAA heritage activity and we are looking forward to discovering more. Thank you Sporting Heritage!
