We want to tell you about our VfL Workshop on April 29th, 2022.
This was our 2nd workshop with the VfL and this time it took place at the AOK-Stadium in the green-white classroom. Our topic was “Football is retarded! Dealing with disabilities in the context of football”
At the beginning we talked about various things, such as how we deal with disabled people or what kind of sports there are for disabled people, like blind football. We started with drawing disabled people as we imagine them and discussed which images we have in our minds and how we would interact with them in real life. After a break, which we were able to use for a game of table football, we had to form teams of two and draw a card with a disability symbol on it – e.g. disabilities like blindness, deafness and sitting in a wheelchair. We had to research on the internet where the entrances and places are for disabled people in the VfL stadium and how these people can experience a typical game.
With this information at hand, we slipped into the role on our card and got to experience the view of a person with one of the three disabilities. On our card was the disability “blindness”. We got blind folds and a blind person’s cane and then we went to the Volkswagen stadium in our role. First, we went to the places for the people with wheelchairs. There is a lot of space for the wheelchairs and there is an extra delivery service for food and drinks, because it is very difficult for the people to move around in a wheelchair since there are many stairs in the stadium. Afterwards, we went to the places where people who are deaf can sit. For these people there is a person who comments on the game in sign language. We tried out some signs for typical game situations and had to guess their meaning. Lastly, we visited the place where blind people can sit. The people get headphones on which the game is commented on for them. After this experience we went back to the green-white classroom to pick up our own sports gear.
The next and last part of our workshop was to try out blind football and walking football. Not everyone is a fan of kicking the ball, but it was still interesting for all of us.
Overall, the day was very interesting and we learned a lot of new things.
Written by Ellen & Liv, 9c
