Bridging the gap between inequalities and sustainability in grassroots football

Leicester Nirvana FC are aiming to be the UK’s first amateur football club to become net zero carbon

In 1990, the city of Leicester was designated Britain’s first environment city in recognition of its years of early efforts to support the natural environment; and in 1996 the city was selected as the European Sustainable City. 

Now, in keeping with that leadership and growth, our grassroots football club – Leicester Nirvana - have set an ambition to become the UK’s first amateur football club to become net zero carbon. 

Our club’s story starts in an inner city neighbourhood, with concrete tower blocks and two-storey maisonettes. An area with limited resources and once one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country. It was here (in Highfields) that Leicester Nirvana was born out of the cracked pavements and littered streets. The words ‘net zero carbon’ were not part of anyone’s vocabulary in the area, nor was sustainability. The priority for this club was grass and space. 

With only one hilly park in the area, which was designated a heritage park; it did not allow organised football matches to take place. Therefore the club could only train in small spaces of the park and had to search for green grass outside of the area to play matches. To provide some context, there is still no community swimming pool or leisure centre, no corporate gyms, and limited grass, and the area continues to have a poor housing threshold. 

By 2010, the club had found a plot of council land (in Hamilton) 4 miles away from its community. As the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers, and we decided to make this our new home. We were fortunate enough to be given a clubhouse although on day one of our opening, it was already too small for the size of the club. By this stage we had grown tremendously and had teams and players from the age of 5 years of age all the way to men’s football, creating a seamless pathway from mini soccer to seniors. 

As of 2021, Leicester is the most densely populated of the East Midlands' 35 local authority areas, with around 36 people living on each football pitch-sized area of land. New statistics have revealed that Leicester is one of the first cities in the UK to have a non-white majority. Census 2021 figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 40.9 per cent of people in the city are from white backgrounds. 

Nirvana started its journey in the 1980’s and has a strong Black and South Asian holding, and as you can imagine, the club has had its fair share of discrimination. Amongst all the challenges, financial and socio-economical, we have grown to become the most consistent highest playing club in the city boundary. 

But there is a feeling amongst the Nirvana community that their voices are not being heard in the climate change debate, and that they are being left behind as other wealthier communities pursue a Net Zero future with expensive interventions and fewer social challenges to overcome in order to live a more sustainable future. 

We could foresee the spiralling cost of living, particularly through the pandemic, and those costs were affecting everything from football kits to running costs. It was at that point we dreamt about a space and a building that not only created its own renewable energy, but one that supported a way of living that could be sustained and increased the wellbeing of our community.  

We read that the United Nations (UN) had launched partnerships with 17 universities around the world to promote best practice around their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We realised the importance of getting the right expertise on board and that De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester was identified as a UN partner to create an Academic Impact Hub. 

It felt like the stars had aligned and so we told DMU of our ambitions and asked them to be our partner on this journey. In July 2022, they agreed to form a partnership with Leicester Nirvana, DMU and the UN, and committed to a long-term vision of working with the club. This partnership became the first of its kind in the United Kingdom, with the aim to develop the first Net Zero Carbon amateur football club in the UK.

Our project seeks to break down barriers to participation for underrepresented people and communities by giving a thousand people a voice on the challenges they face on this journey to net zero - and Leicester is surely the place to do it.

In November 2022, we held our first event at DeMontfort University, Field of Dreams, as part of the Leicester Business Festival with presentations from the United Nations - New York, Eintracht Peitz – Germany and Victoria Park Queens – Leicester. The event was well attended by local academics, consultants, football clubs both grassroots and professional, the local authority and local businesses. 

A deeper dive into briefing local and national organisations on the project will see us hold our second event in early 2023. The aim is to take people on the journey with us and to provide groups and organisations with an opportunity to become involved early on in the planning. 

The two sides to the project stem around research and community. In terms of community, our next step is to start the local education and up-skilling of local people, particularly young people, and take them on this journey to zero.

• We will be gathering baseline knowledge of our members through various forms of engagement. 

• We will also be developing projects coproduced by the young people themselves to make sure their voices are heard.

• We will be working with specialists from DMU and local businesses such as Severn Trent water to deliver educational workshops around renewable energy and recycling. 

In terms of research, DMU will lead on this. The idea is to develop action research on specific sustainable interventions that will see DMU design solutions and then work with partners to trial these solutions in real time.      

As a club from humble beginnings, we are extremely proud to have sparked a global initiative which has attracted amateur clubs from around the world.  As the project has a focus on research and community, it works best if universities are linked with local clubs in order to share the best practices of modern day innovations. We have a number of universities and local football clubs who have requested to be involved from Germany, the Gambia, Republic of Benin, Spain and Malaysia, all joining the partnership on this journey to net zero. 

As a club that is heavily invested in the community, it is important for us to inspire young people to greatness and encourage people, particularly Black and South Asians, to better understand the sustainability issues that are affecting us all. 

The goal is always to educate and change lives, and on this journey to net zero, we also hope to inspire others around the world to do the same.

Ivan Liburd
Trustee, Leicester Nirvana