Arsenal Women has partnered with Washington DC-based community program DC SCORES to encourage young children to express themselves through poetry.

At a session at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where Arsenal FC is training as part of its pre-season tour of the USA, children from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington DC were put through their paces by the Arsenal coaching team led by Jonas Eidevall before taking part in a poetry masterclass led by players Lotte Wubben-Moy, Alessia Russo and Emily Fox.

Led by program coordinator Zarea Boyde, herself a former poet-athlete, the players held a poetry workshop to create acrostic poems centered around the term “poet-athlete.” Eidevall believes, “It’s so important that we have this opportunity to connect with our communities here. The poet-athletes here today look up to role models like Emily Fox, and when you can connect with your role models, it gives you the belief that you can make it anywhere.”

DC SCORES is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year after being founded in 1994 as an after-school program at Marie Reed Elementary by Julie Kennedy, a public school teacher in Washington, DC, after she noticed that the girls in her class had fewer extracurricular opportunities than the boys.

Since then, the project has evolved into a legacy of the USA hosting the finals of the Men’s World Cup. The project now integrates soccer, poetry and service-learning to help children from low-income families across the district improve their physical fitness, find their voice, improve their literacy skills, increase their engagement in school and strengthen their ties to their community. It currently supports 3,000 student or poet-athletes at over 60 schools.

In 2022, England international Lotte Wubben-Moy launched a similar initiative called Time to Explore in partnership with Arsenal and the community, offering weekly sessions for 16-year-old girls in Camden, Hackney and Islington to explore creative opportunities.

So it was a natural choice to have Wubben-Moy recite for the group. She said: “It was inspiring to know that there are two similar programs running on two continents. It’s special to see that no matter where you live, art has meaning and brings a beauty and purity that we can all relate to. It creates a level playing field in a way, just like football does.”

When asked about her favorite moment of the event, Wubben-Moy revealed: “I was sitting next to Dylan, a Latino. In his poem, the word Libre came up, which means freedom. That word best expresses how I feel about art and football, and when I talk to our athletes here today, I can tell how they feel too.”

Virginia native Emily Fox returned to her home state with Arsenal and said, “I always want to connect with our community and young people, whether in DC or in England.”

“I’ve never heard of an athlete who is also a poet, but it’s so inspiring. Poetry and football – in a way, a lot of people think they’re both art. Being able to express yourself is so important.”

“This visit was special for a number of reasons,” says Anthony Francavilla, Chief Development Officer at DC SCORES. “First of all, it was incredible to see someone like Lotte – a true poet-athlete in her own right – and to learn about Time to Explore and the similarities to our work at DC SCORES. The poet-athlete movement needs to be global, and we are excited that it already is.

“Secondly, as a women-founded and women-led organization, we are so excited to have Arsenal Women touring the U.S. and receiving so much support. It’s great for the sport and it’s great for our poet-athletes to connect with their role models.”