Culture workshops, creative expression: Red Star FC, much more than a football club

He made the best hours of football in France. Red Star FC, a mythical club founded in 1897, is today a key player in the sports world. But the institution also wishes to promote the cultural field as explained by its president Patrice Haddad, guest on the program Europe 1 Sport (every evening from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.).

Arrived in the club in 2005, the president of the club is invested with a mission with the young people: “it is a real responsibility the Red Star. It is in the heart of the Seine Saint-Denis, the youngest department of France , the poorest and where cultural bridges have been very rare”. A popular club in the Parisian suburbs, where young people often come from poor families, Red Star is not limited to football. This is how a cultural branch was created: “the RedStar Lab”, a way for educators not to lock children into football, a very closed environment, and to confront them with other worlds.

“A relationship to one’s own creativity”

The team with the red star and the green circle finds its second wind through its cultural projects. “We do workshops on photography, on cinema, on music”, detailed Patrice Haddad in Europe 1 Sport. “We know that we don’t only train footballers, but also citizens on the side. It’s ‘peri-football’, that is to say that we give them the chance to see beyond the football,” he continued. A project which goes beyond the sporting one and which resonates with the youth of Seine-Saint-Denis and all of Île-de-France.

Educators have thus been trained to support these young people. For the club president, “the Red Star makes sense”. “What I wanted to put in this club is a relationship to his own creativity. A football player is a creative expression through the intelligence of the legs on the ground, but it’s vision”. Open your mind, discover new areas but above all share, the values ​​of the football club, dear to Patrice Haddad, constitute its identity today.