Over the course of several months in 2024, Frome Town Women FC started their weekly training with a different kind of warm-up. Artist Ania Varez led the group through an array of different dance-based exercises, combining fitness drills with choreography, playful routines and physical games.

We are always interested in bringing together artists and different kinds of community groups. Although these workshops didn’t progress into a major project, we were really pleased to support these experiments and witness the impact on the players.

‘They were kind of like there in the middle of the pitch and, you know, put the music on and I just let them do it. And it was really great to watch, actually, because they really kind of got into it. And then from there I think it really picked up… So they would do a bit of dance work together and then they go onto the football pitch to train. And that worked really well. And I think it did work as a kind of a nice sort of social bonding thing for the players… it gave them something quite different to sort of do together without involving kind of me or any of the other kind of coaching staff. And it kind of gave them a chance to sort of see different sides of each other as well. So I think it was really positive from that respect.’
- Ben, Head Coach, Frome Town Women FC.