World Stories: Young Voices – My Experience, Sadie

Meet the young people who have been involved in developing the new World Stories: Young Voices Gallery which opens at Brighton Museum and Art gallery 23 June 2012.

Sadie operates the Boom for an interview at the Amex Stadium.

Q.  Who are you and how did you get involved?

A. My Name is Sadie and I’m 17. I’m currently a student at BHASVIC and I love sport, especially football. I got involved in the project through Hazel, (a youth worker who works with the museum) who came up and spoke to me and a friend about a project she was starting up that would feature in the museum. The project involved football which is a sport I love so I couldn’t wait to get involved.

Q. What was the project about?

A. The Football in Brighton and Bamako project was a comparison between young people in Mali (Africa) and young people in Brighton, and how football has an impact on their lives. It shows the similarity and differences between football in two very different parts of the world.

Q.What did you do?

A. My involvement within the project as well as others was to create a video to show how football affects young people’s lives. We interviewed professional footballers from Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club to see how football affected them as a young person, as well as young people at a community tournament run by Albion in the community to see their opinions on football.

Q. What has been the most important thing you have learned during this project? 

A. The most important thing I have learned in this project is how similar the effects of football are on young people all over the world and how it brings people together to share the same passion and hobby.

Sadie is interviewed by the BBC

Q. What new skills do you feel that you have developed?  

A. For our project we had to make a film so we got to use all the equipment such as the cameras, the boom and cans. Also with our film we interviewed people, so we got to learn how to interview people properly and ask the right type of questions. Also I was lucky enough to be picked to be interviewed by the BBC along with 3 others in our project. As well as interviewing people, I learned how to be interviewed properly too.

Q. What did you enjoy the most?

A. Overall, I really enjoyed the whole project and my involvement with it, and felt it was a really good experience, and a great project to be a part of. I really enjoyed making the film as a whole and seeing it come together at the end was really nice. Also getting to meet new people from different backgrounds and with different opinions about football. One of my biggest highlights though was getting to have my football boots put in the museum because you really feel part of it.

Object of the Month – Brighton & Hove Albion Football Shirt

Brighton & Hove Albion have made an impressive start to the season in the new Amex Stadium. Some fans may already be thinking back to past glories, such as the 1983 FA Cup final. One of Brighton’s goals in that final was scored by Gary Stevens, and his shirt is proudly displayed in our Exploring Brighton gallery. Back in the less optimistic days of 2005, one of our volunteers, Wills McGuigan, was so impressed by this shirt that he wrote down his memories of that final.

Football shirt belonging to Gary Stevens, Brighton & Hove Albion player in the 1983 FA Cup final.

Brighton & Hove Albion Football Shirt

If you were to tell someone that Brighton & Hove Albion were playing in the FA Cup final this year, they would eventually (no doubt after a hearty laugh) look on you with pity and accuse you of living in a football-shaped dream world.

Way back in the early 1980s however, when this fan was just 9 years old, the Seagulls commanded respect that stretched all the way to the Anfields and the Old Traffords of the domestic game.

Gary Stevens played for us – an England international no less! Irishman Gerry Ryan represented his country too. Steve Gatting, Michael Robinson,…..Steve Foster was heroic, deadly, extremely hairy (he wore a headband too and STILL looked cool),… the mighty lanky Graham Moseley in goal (who I’d actually met at Sussex General – I had stepped on a weaver fish near the West Pier, he was visiting his son who was in the next bed)…. In 1983 Brighton & Hove Albion had made it to the FA Cup final!

At 9 years old you would have forgiven me for believing that this was just the beginning of a golden era for the Seagulls – a Golden era at the Goldstone with silverware pouring out of every trophy cupboard.

The enemy was Manchester United. It was David and Goliath. I watched the game at home on Goldstone Road in Hove. Manchester United were 2-1 up with only a few minutes left to play…. and 22 years later in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery I can actually listen to the hero of the day, Gary Stevens, talk about how he hit the ball as hard as he could at the target, scoring the equaliser!

Brighton & Hove Albion had made it to Wembley and hadn’t lost to Manchester United. That was our victory.

And yeah we lost the replay of course, but the Seagulls came home to a hero’s welcome all the same. The procession passed by the end of my road. I ran out to join in and waved furiously at the Seagulls as they passed by in their very own open-top bus (Brighton & Hove Albion’s answer to the Batmobile, I thought at the time). I looked up and saw them all – Gary, Graham, Gerry, Steve, Michael – and the rest waving right back at me.

It was like the end of that Nick Hornby film ‘Fever Pitch’, except that everything was blue and white instead of red, and we hadn’t won the league, we’d lost the FA Cup. But you can ask anyone who was around back then – losing never felt so good.

Wills McGuigan

Withdean Stadium

Brighton & Hove Albion move to their new ground at Falmer at the start of the 2011 football season. Their previous ground, Withdean Stadium, has had a varied history.

Withdean,1938

The stadium was opened by Lord Gage on 17 April 1937 and consisted of eleven hard tennis courts, ten grass courts (irrigated by an underground system) and four squash racquet courts. The grandstand could seat 2,000 spectators and the Brighton Herald described it as the ‘new Wimbledon’.

In its first tennis tournament, competitors included Senorita Anita Lizana, ‘the dainty Chilean star’ and world champion, Dorothy Round, who was astonished by the lack of spectators, saying

‘Doesn’t Brighton like tennis ?’

‘Antoinette’ of the Brighton Herald marvelled at the outfit worn by the tennis player, the  Hon. C.N.O. Ritchie, who wore

‘pale blue plus-fours, navy blue stockings and a sage green overcoat’

Withdean Stadium, 1956

During the Second World War the stadium was used as a mortuary, but was re-launched as the Brighton Olympic Stadium on 22 May 1947. Described by one of the new lessees as the ‘Wembley of the south’, the opening ceremony was marked by a fanfare played on a hunting horn by ten year old Leon Tuppen.

In 1948 a zoo was opened at the stadium by film star, Jean Simmons. Several animals were released from baskets during the event and Miss Simmons

‘forgetting her ’New Look’ costume …knelt down on the ground to take two black and white puppies from their basket’

A year later the zoo was enlarged and reopened, this time by film star, Jean Kent. She was besieged by autograph hunters and had to make an escape via the back door of the club house. There had already been some disruption to the opening when two wallabies escaped and were found nibbling the plants in the garden of a Withdean resident.

Withdean Zoo, 1948

The zoo was not a financial success and closed in June 1952.

In 1955, the Stadium was reconstructed as an athletic venue and on 20 September 1980 Steve Ovett opened an all-weather running track.

Brighton & Hove Albion arrived at the site in 1999, having moved from the Goldstone Ground. With the team’s move to the new ground in 2011, the function of Withdean Stadium may yet change again.

Paul Jordan, Senior History Centre Officer