BE A PART OF YOUR FOOTBALL CLUB’S HISTORY!
September 2012 will see Swansea City F.C. celebrating the 100th anniversary of professional football in Swansea. The football club has been a part of the fabric of the city, and an important part of the social life and leisure time of generations of citizens. The influence of the club also goes beyond Swansea, with many fans being drawn from across south and west Wales.
Swansea University, in partnership with the Swans Supporters Trust, has won a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create an on-line archive of supporters’ experiences over as much of the last 100 years as possible. The aim of the project is to find out what Swansea City F.C. means to the community, by recording the experiences and stories of the fans. We want to do this by getting people to complete a questionnaire (either on paper or on-line); to look out any memorabilia (programmes, scarves, photographs, etc.) that can be recorded, along with their stories; and to volunteer to help with the project by interviewing other fans to add oral history recordings to the archive, or helping us to find and scan documents and photos.
The questionnaire asks a series of questions which need written answers - it is not a tick-box or multiple-choice type of survey. This is your chance to record your experiences of supporting Swansea City. After some basic questions about you, there are three further groups of questions.
While the focus is very much on the history of the club and its community of fans, we are also interested in the changing patterns of behaviour, leisure, and support during the last hundred years. We want to capture as wide a range of experiences as possible. The purpose is not just to hear happy memories – we hope the range of experiences will reflect the ups and downs of supporters’ lives, the passions, the highs and lows.
As part of the Centenary celebrations, the Swans Supporters Trust are also publishing a series of books that will tell the history of the Swans. The answers to your questionnaire may be used in one of these books and other project publicity and publications.
By submitting your completed questionnaire you are agreeing to the use of your answers in the on-line archive and any subsequent publication or research.
