Help Us Combat Football-Related Domestic Abuse

"Sir Alex Ferguson used to call this time of the season SQUEAKY BUM TIME".

Noun.

Meaning:

A tense period of time...

SQUEAKY BUM'S NEVER GONNA BE ONE OF THE LADS.

Have you ever heard of this - when England's men's football team lose a match, domestic violence rises by around 38%?

Well...The reality is, the case numbers are significantly higher. This 38% statistic is only based on reported incidents, because sadly a vast majority of domestic abuse cases are never reported.

HELLO!

Hello, my name is Alicia Forde. I am the writer and director of SQUEAKY BUM'S NEVER GONNA BE ONE OF THE LADS. I'm also an actor, recently appearing in 'Waterloo Road' as Kelly-Jo Rafferty and Sarah Duddy in BBC's 'TIME'.

Born and raised, in a small working-class town in the North-West of England, my writing is inspired by my upbringing forever rooting for the underdog and bringing untold stories to light. Entwining the personal and political.

ABOUT THE SHORT FILM:

LOGLINE: Set in the North-West of England, Year 11 lad’s lad, Kyle gets swept up by the potential glory of the England men’s team winning the Euros. However, he’s soon blindsided when a puppet show starts to reveal his dark past.

The film is about the correlation between football fandom and domestic violence. How Kyle (our protagonist) is on the cusp of succumbing to the traumatic behaviour he was exposed to as a child. In the film we examine triggers, focusing on the brutal side of football fandom and how it sadly interweaves itself with a devastating amount of rising domestic violence cases.

A FEW OF OUR TEAM...

So far we have a boss team on board. Full of amazing, well-known and up-and-coming talent. We've managed to find some amazing female crew to spearhead this project and we're giving people a chance to shadow departments on the days of the shoot. Doing this allows us to give fellow creatives the chance to get their first film credit, something that can be so hard to come by. If it wasn't for opportunities like this a lot of us wouldn't be where we are now, me included.

RAISING AWARENESS ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:

Raising awareness on domestic violence means a lot to me on a personal level for many different reasons. I’ve got too many people in my life who have been affected by domestic abuse and I want to do everything in my power to raise awareness and the power I have right now is through film.

WHY I WROTE THIS FILM:

Excuse the embarrassing photos...

I grew up playing footy and rugby with the lads. The only girl in my team until I was around fourteen years old. Football has always been a huge sport in my life. It still is now. I grew up seeing the joy footy brings, but I also saw the aggression and anger losing brought out of some lads around me and their dads. I’ve seen all the Kyle’s you can imagine in real life. I know who he is. It’s easy to become a product of your environment. We don’t want more passionate football kids to be okay with calling a can of Stella a 'wife beater', for shouting racial slurs at football matches, or for them to imitate toxicity just because they've seen their Dad doing it. We don’t want to see more young lads mixing passion with anger and we don’t want them to become abusers. It’s a cycle that needs to be stopped and needs to be understood.

WHY WE NEED SOME EXTRA HELP:

We sadly lost some funding recently that would have gone a long way to help make this short film. BUT, we're grafters. We're a team led by proud working-class northern northerners who ain't gonna let that stop us!

We know how hard life is right now financially, so honestly any donation big or small would be so appreciated. If it’s a quid towards a crew member's brekkie, or a fiver so everyone can have a good few brews (what’s a shoot without coffee ay), or even 50p for a bunch of bananas (gonna need that energy you feel me). Tesco got it right when they said every little helps.

OUR GOALS (pardon the pun):

We aim to get our short film into the festival circuit as a way of spreading awareness and showcasing our hard work. We've also been very inspired by Molly Manning Walker's film ‘How To Have Sex’ (if you haven’t seen it, it’s amazing go watch!). How To Have Sex is a groundbreaking/award-winning film that will be taught in schools via MUBI and the Schools Consent Project.

We think this is amazing and we believe we can do the same with this project, getting it into schools, doing workshops, and working alongside charities to raise awareness.

INCENTIVES

As we've said, any donation big or small would be gratefully received. But here are some incentives should you choose to donate:

£2 - Grab one of the crew a cracking brew!

£20 - "The only thing I like better than talking about food is eating." Donate £20 and put it towards the fund that keeps our crew's bellies hearty and full.

£30 - Get your name on the big screen! Donate £30 and we'll add your name to our credits list.

£40 - A personal video message from our commander-in-chief, Alicia, thanking you for being an absolute LEGEND for donating.

£50 - Dust off your fanciest frock to attend the film's premiere.

£100 - A film and charity split! Donate £100 and we'll send half the proceeds to one of our affiliated Domestic Violence charities.

AND FINALLY, if you've made it this far... THANK YOU.

❤️

Please help us in any way you can by donating/sharing.

From the bottom of me wee northern heart, thank you! Let’s put an end to domestic violence.

Forever and always appreciated.

With love,

Alicia, Ethan and Megan

Xx