British Fencing and Maslaha launch Beyond the Buzzwords report

This week, with our partner Maslaha, we launched ‘Beyond the Buzzwords’, a report that looks at learnings from the Muslim Girls Fence project.

Muslim Girls Fence is a unique and exciting project that brings together the sport of fencing, conversation and creativity. Open to all women yet centering the needs of Muslim women, participants attend a series of fencing classes and immersive creative workshops all designed around topics of conversation chosen by them and on their own terms.

The partnership between BF and Maslaha began in 2015 and has since grown from working in schools to working with community groups across the country, including Birmingham, Doncaster, Bradford and London. The project is supported by Comic Relief and Sport England.

As the report states, “Muslim Girls Fence is complex. The project connects activities—sport, art and discussion—that are usually practised separately. It is offered to Muslim women, but is also open to all women. Its list of objectives ranges from the concrete (increased levels of fitness and wellbeing) to the aspirational (changing perceptions in the mass media). All this is complex, but it works.”

Virginia Bailey, Head of Participation at BF, says, “Our partnership with Maslaha has challenged our thinking and shifted the emphasis from ‘Muslim women are hard to reach’ to ‘what are we doing to eliminate the barriers that sport can present? Now more than ever, it’s vital that partnerships and projects like this exist in the sector.”

The link to the report can be found below