The UEFA Women's EURO 2025 kicks off in Switzerland today. In celebration, Library PhD student Cameron Huggett explores the important contributions made by women fans to football culture over the last 50 years, as showcased in our current Voice of the Fans exhibition.

© Alexandra Francis (left) and Filipa Namorado (right), Forward Play! Photo Tracey Welch

In the last few decades, women’s football has gone from strength to strength. Attendance records are regularly being broken, whilst domestic and international matches are enjoying increased media coverage. Of course, this was not always the case. Between 1921 and 1970, the Football Association banned women from playing the sport on affiliated grounds. However, this did not stop women during that time from taking an interest in the game as players and spectators.

Getting women’s voices heard

Voice of the Fans is an exhibition co-produced by us and Leeds Libraries exploring the different ways football fans have expressed themselves and stood up for their communities, values and beliefs from the 1960s to the present day – primarily through the medium of fanzines. These DIY publications were created by supporters, for supporters, and provided an ‘alternative voice’ to the output of clubs, the popular press or the sport’s governing bodies.

Voice of the Fans exhibition. Photo by Tracey Welch

Whilst football fanzines were a male-dominated medium in the years following their inception, women fans still found ways to make their voices heard. Notably, pioneering publications like Born Kicking and Against the Tide challenged the ‘masculine’ world of football fandom by calling out sexism and misogyny at matches, and within the fanzines themselves, whilst also providing a space for women supporters to build a community of their own.

Women also took an active role as contributors to club-based fanzines and the broader alternative press during the 1990s. For instance, writer Andrea Hetherington covered grassroots women’s football in Leeds Other Paper, whilst Anna Tuersley edited the Swindon Town fanzine The 69er. Since the turn of the millennium, fans have been able to combine digital creativity with more traditional print mediums to express their fandom and identities in new ways. Projects such as Girlfans have provided visibility to women supporters of men’s professional clubs in the English and Scottish league systems, whilst SEASON zine has redefined the boundaries of ‘football culture’, blending themes including sport, feminism and fashion.

© Jacqui McAssey @girlfanszine

Online expression and activism

Online platforms have increasingly become the primary medium for fan-made content. These platforms have served to increase opportunities for expression and activism amongst supporters who have previously been underrepresented within fan media, including women, the LGBTQ+ community and people of colour. Within Voice of the Fans, you’ll find video screens displaying webpages captured by the UK Web Archive, including from the campaigns Her Game Too, against sexism in football, and On the Ball, which advocates for the availability of period products in stadiums.Although more ephemeral than their print counterparts, archived sites such as these ensure that evidence of digital fan activism is preserved for future generations.

The women’s game

Also included within Voice of the Fans are objects that relate to the women’s game specifically. Before the emergence of a significant fanzine movement, the Women’s Football Association, founded in 1969, produced their own newsletter to keep members updated. By the 1990s, fan-made publications had begun to be produced that reflected the culture of the game as they saw it. These included Kick Off, the first fanzine dedicated to women’s football in Scotland. In more recent years, the offering has only expanded with publications like The Women’s Game photo-zine capturing the imagery and culture of Lionesses’ fandom during the 2019 World Cup.

Taken together, these objects paint a picture of the activism, diversity and inclusivity of women’s football in the face of cultural and institutional barriers.  

You can see the Voice of the Fans exhibition at Leeds Central Library until 10 August. Find out more 

Independent researcher Bennett Bacon used the British Library to make an extraordinary discovery. Examining marks found on cave paintings from the Ice Age, he found what seemed to be a proto-writing system, dating 20,000 years earlier than any other writing ever identified. Bacon collaborated with academics to research and write a paper about his findings. 

There are absolutely millions of signs and marks from the Ice Age, and there have been various explanations of them. Some people think they're magical. This project started when I was looking at a painting of an aurochs with four black dots from the Lascaux Cave, and wondering what the dots meant. I noticed that all of the aurochs in the paintings have four dots, and I decided they might be numbers, relating to a lunar calendar. I put the calendar together in about three to four weeks, then contacted a calendar expert: Dr Tony Freeth at University College London. 

A cave painting of an aurochs with four dots on its body, on the wall of Lascaux Cave (Dordogne, France), created around 21,500 years ago. Credit: JoJan

You have to find a pattern in nature

Four dots appear alongside each auroch and three with each fish. Interval analysis is the only logical way to work it out. The interval between a fish, with three, and an aurochs, with four, is one. The interval between an aurochs, and red deer, who normally have six, is two. You have to find a pattern in nature that matches that pattern. You lay out modern mating intervals and it's a perfect match, across 32 different species. 

Tony said, ‘We need a lot more evidence.’ After a couple years’ more research, we took our theory to Paul Pettitt, an archaeology professor at Durham. He offered to give us all the help we needed, and involved his colleague Professor Robert Kentridge, too. 

Each one of the lines represents a month

The Upper Paleolithic artefacts are engraved pieces of slate or rock. They are local to the cave where they are found, and it appears that they record information about that cave. The writing system is like this: each one of the lines represents a month, four lunar cycles. The calendar starts when the snow melts and the grass comes back on the mountainsides and the world comes alive. It's spring. 

Bacon's notebook

You can show that the animal, chamois, is in the south-east in month one. In month two, it gives birth. In month three, it's leaving the cave. 

A sign can go in any one of these positions, but depending where it is, its value is altered. So if we add a sign ‘Y’ in position six, it simply means that an animal, let’s say salmon, gives birth in the sixth month after the start of spring. It's a combination of mathematics, science and metaphor. ‘Y’ means that one animal splits and becomes two animals.

The person who has made this writes it in month two of this year, but it’s about month two of next year. The idea is, ‘Let's be here, because the chamois will be there. They will have given birth to young. The herds are really vulnerable.’ So the group can track the young herds. 

Numerosity is an innate human quality

It's like a city guide. Groups go to this cave and discover that, for example, in month seven, the reindeer are migrating, the fish are contra-migrating, the cave is a spawning ground for trout or salmon. So it was a really incredibly useful piece of information, especially when winter was coming. We thought advanced number systems such as a calendar might only belong to urban societies. In fact, numerosity appears to be an innate human quality, provided you have a sufficient mass of individuals. 

Survival is about getting food so that you can eat, but it’s also the ability, in a hostile environment, to communicate and pool the resources of the group. You need systems for doing that. We think the cave paintings are one of those systems. You make paintings, in a sense, for everyone. You can't survive as a little group on your own, but if all of you work together, communicating, sharing tools, sharing technology, you increase your chances. We think that these writing systems allowed that to happen.

Most human groups went extinct: Neandertals; Denisovans. We're the only ones that made it, out of maybe three dozen groups, possibly because of our communication skills, and the ability to use more sophisticated language, and conceive of the world in an abstract way. 

These people are very easy to connect with

It’s extraordinary how close these people from 20,000 years ago are to humans today. They have personal artefacts – you'd call them jewellery – in which there are marks engraved. One of the things they engraved, most frequently, is the fact that they had a child. They often give the time of birth when that child is born, but they may also indicate the sex of that child. These people are very easy to connect with and I think that's the real value of the work.

I've never been to the caves themselves. I will often look at 2,000 images in a day. I need to process vast amounts, which is why I come here to the Library, and I do a lot of the work on the internet as well. We look at every example of something that we can find, so that we're not making hypotheses based on small amounts of data. 

A library preserves the past

The collection at the Library is very comprehensive, containing older books that are very difficult to find. Some of these caves have degraded, so the early photographs are very useful. A lot of the objects have been lost, so the only record is in an old book. It’s a blissful place to work. The staff are really good. 

I think this paper probably wouldn't have happened without the Library. I was here yesterday, inspecting a book which I could only access here. It's a really good book but it's from 1920. A library preserves the past. It’s the place where the things that are dead still exist.  The internet is wonderful, but a good library does things that the internet can’t.

As told to Lucy Peters

Young Creators Darragh and Emma filming their TikTok series

Young Creators Lab is a groundbreaking digital co-creation project, sparking global conversations inspired by our collection. Generously supported by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, the programme offers creators aged 18 – 24 a platform to research, develop and showcase their stories, while providing valuable career development, skills and training in filmmaking, storytelling and social media.

Across two cohorts, our Young Creators have produced inspiring and meaningful stories for our social media channels, reaching 650,000 viewers (and counting) around the world. The first series was inspired by our music archives and the 2024 exhibition, Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music, looking at everything from the legacy of Notting Hill Carnival to the journey of one music sample from the 1970s to today. Our most recent Young Creators have been exploring the theme of change-makers – activists, authors and orators who changed the world with their words, helping to empower marginalised people.

Discover their stories

Images from left: Young Creator Luca takes on the role of William Hone; Angela Davis, portrait by Bernard Gotfryd, Young Creator Diva filming at the Library

• The Young Creators’ films shine a light on inspiring figures from across history, with the latest films including:
• activists Angela Davis and Malala Yousafzai
• 19th century satirist William Hone
• the extraordinary writing of Margaret Atwood
• the life and poetry of trailblazing Black broadcaster Una Marson
• the story of the UK’s first LGBTQ+ bookshop, Gay’s The Word.

With support from curators across the Library, the Young Creators discovered unique collection items which inspired their films, including limited edition copies of Margaret Atwood’s poetry, and Angela Davis’ powerful open letter written from jail in the 1970s, calling on the youth of the world to unite to free political prisoners.

Working together over three months, our Young Creators’ planned and produced their own TikTok series, showcasing their different perspectives and styles, from journalism to street interviews and comedy. All of the films seek to show younger audiences how they can use our collection to spark new journeys of discovery, exploring themes that matter to them, from social change to community building.

Watch our highlights or discover the full series on TikTok @britishlibrary:

• Angela Davis: The OG Influencer?
• Handmaid’s Tale, or Here and Now?

Delving deeper into censorship and the power of community

Young Creators on the set of their YouTube film about censorship.

Through their research and development of their TikTok series, our Young Creators noticed recurring themes that came up with each of the change-makers’ stories; the use of censorship, and the importance of communities to effect change. The cohort worked in larger groups to create two longer YouTube films to further explore these subjects.
Emma, Karolina, Kemi, Charlotte, Jasmine and Ya’Eesh brought together the stories of Angela Davis, Margaret Atwood and Malala Yousafzai to explore how female activists face – and overcome – challenges of censorship.

Luca, Diva, Cecilia, Sav and Shilton showed us how William Hone and Angela Davis used the power of the written word to drum up support for their cause, both writing letters from jail to mobilise their supporters, and ultimately win their freedom and acquittal.

Introducing our Associate Creators

Alongside our two cohorts of Young Creators, we’re also thrilled to collaborate with professional content creators, authors and journalists to share their own perspectives on making change, inspired by our collection:

• bestselling author of Slay in Your Lane and The List Yomi Adegoke explores trailblazing Black female writers
• journalist Sophia Smith Galer looks at endangered languages and cultures through our Endangered Archives Programme
• storyteller Keith Afadi explores how we can make change in our personal lives using resources like our Business & IP Centre
• Historical Han shows how the ancient Greeks forever impacted world literature.

Each of our Associate Creators will be joining us to share their insight and stories at Connect and Create on 30 May, an event at the Library to celebrate the culmination of Young Creators Lab and what our creators have achieved.

Watch on our TikTok channel @britishlibrary

Want to find out more?

Learn more about each of the change-makers featured in Young Creators Lab and their life and work with our recommended reading.

Angela Davis

American political activist, professor, and author, Angela Davis was a member of the USA Communist Party and the Black Panthers as well as an advocate for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. We have numerous items in our collection relating to Angela Davis’ life and work - read more here. You could also her groundbreaking feminist analysis Women, Race and Class which covers US history from the slave trade and abolitionism movements to the women's liberation movements which began in the 1960s.

Gay’s The Word

The UK’s first LGBTQ+ bookshop, championing queer writers and communities. In 1984 the shop was raided by UK Customs, targeting foreign imports of writing deemed ‘obscene’. This included works by Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Kate Millet and Jean-Paul Sartre. The raid highlighted prejudices faced by the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s, but despite its challenges, Gay’s The Word is still operating in London today. Watch our film on the Gay Liberation Front at 50, which features the founders of Gay’s The Word.

Margaret Atwood

Canadian writer and novelist Margaret Atwood has published over 35 volumes of poetry, novels, and non-fiction, but is perhaps best known for her 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (now a TV series). We hold a selection of Atwood’s work, including her most famous novels, and a limited edition copy of her first self-published poetry collection, Double Persephone, which she hand-set and designed herself.

Malala Yousafzai

A Pakistani activist and advocate for girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban aged 15, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her advocacy work, aged just 17 (the youngest ever recipient). Now based in the UK, she has since gone on to set up The Malala Fund, supporting education projects around the world. Discover her blog, written for BBC Urdu under a pseudonym while she was living in Pakistan.

Una Marson

Poet, journalist, playwright, and the first Black woman to be employed by the BBC, Una Marson moved from Jamaica to London in 1932. She produced Caribbean Voices for BBC radio, which became a key platform for West Indian writers in the UK. Her prolific output is only now gaining recognition. We hold a number of Marson’s poetry collections at the Library, as well as the only known copy of her play At What Price, which examines interracial relationships and sexual harassment, first performed in London in 1933.

William Hone

A British journalist and political reformer who advocated for free speech, William Hone’s work as a satirist, pamphleteer and publisher made him an influential figure in the fight against political corruption. In 1817 he was charged with ‘publishing seditious material’ and defended himself in court without a lawyer, going on to prove that his publications were intended as satire and not as a serious threat to government. We have a selection of items in our collection showcasing the work of Hone, including his self-published newspaper, The Reformist Register, from 1817, and the satirical pamphlet, The Political House that Jack Built, published 1819 –1820.