Welcome to Volume 2 of the Siren Summer Series!
Firstly thank you to everyone for your kind words on having us back in your inboxes and thanks also for your support of Georgia and Scarlett who kicked off the #SirenSummer Series for us.
What a pair of superstars!
If you missed our last newsletter, across the #SirenSummer Series we’ll be sharing work from some fabulous people – some will be familiar faces who’ve written for Siren before and some will be new voices that we are stoked to be bringing to you.
They’ll be sharing stories close to their hearts, however they want to share them.
Siren has always been a space for diverse voices and diverse ways of storytelling, so the writers we’ve commissioned over our #SirenSummer Series have been given free reign to write what they want, and how they want to write it!
**Cue the thrilling moments when commissions arrive in our inbox**
In this newsletter, we’re delighted to share a story from Mrinal Asija, who after years of loving cricket from the sidelines has stepped up to the crease.
Will we ever tire of hearing women and non-binary people find their home in sport? No, no we will not.
Join us at the movies?
Sports fans, we are in for a treat at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival!
On Sunday 19 November the beautiful Capitol Theatre on Swanston Street will screen two remarkable films.
Equal the Contest is a brilliant documentary from non-binary filmmaker Mitch Nivalis which chronicles the story of Nivalis’ experience learning to play footy with the Mount Alexander Falcons, an Australian rules football club in Castlemaine created in 2021 by and for women and gender-diverse people, and their quest to be allowed to play in the Central Victoria Football League.
Equal the Contest is screening on Sunday 19 November at 2pm.
Jafar Panahi’s Offside is one of the most charming and poignant sports films ever made. Iranian women soccer fans travel to a World Cup qualifier match in Tehran despite it being illegal for them to be spectators by disguising themselves as boys. Will they be able to fool the guards?
Offside is screening right after Equal the Contest on Sunday 19 November at 4:30pm.
AND as a fantastic FREE curtain-raiser to the afternoon, Joy FM’s Game On! program host, Jacqueline Shields will moderate an all-star panel featuring non-binary filmmaker and director of Equal the Contest, Mitch Nivalis, co-founder of Proud 2 Play, Dr Ryan Storr and Siren co-founder and Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Swinburne University, Dr Kasey Symons.
The panel begins at 12:30pm. Tickets for the panel are free but you have to book!
Tickets for the panel and Equal the Contest and Offside are on sale now and we figured, what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than by getting all our pals together and going to the movies!
So grab your ticket today and join us?
And just because we can, we’re offering Siren Subscribers the chance to win a double pass for the whole afternoon! That’s two tickets for the panel, plus Equal the Contest and Offside.
All you have to do is email contact@sirensport.com.au and tell us why you subscribe to Siren.
Entries close 5pm AEDT Sunday 12 November. The winner will be notified via email on Monday 13 November.
Cricket, community, confidence - social T20 is empowering women
By Mrinal Asija
“But any apprehensions that I had vanished on the first day of training. What I found at the Youlden Parkville Cricket Club (YPCC) was a supportive community of players and coaches. There were players much older than me, players much younger than me and players with no previous experience of playing cricket. A good fielding effort was cheered loudly, and a missed catch got shouts of “great effort”.”
Don’t miss the Siren Summer Book Club!
We’ve been reading The Matilda Effect while also watching the Matildas. The contrast between the stories in Fiona Crawford’s book and the generation-shaping impact of the Matildas is something.
It all just makes us EVEN more excited for the Siren Summer Book Club.
We’ll host our virtual book club via Zoom on Wednesday November 22 at 7pm AEDT where we will be joined by the author, the fabulous Dr Fiona Crawford.
The Siren Summer Book Club is FREE and all are welcome to join.
Simply sign up here.
If you haven’t got yourself a copy of The Matilda Effect yet, you can grab a copy here.
And congratulations to Laura, Eden and Robyn who scored themselves a free copy!
The Siren Sport x ABC Sport partnership
Check out the latest piece published through our ongoing partnership with ABC Sport.
This photo essay comes from the awesome Kel Rowe who has snapped and shared what it means to have footy pathways for women of all ages in AFL Masters.
Did you hear? Siren is now on Patreon!
The work that we do at Siren…
commissioning and paying writers and content creators
running the Emerging Sports Writer Program
supporting writers to get their work published on ABC Sport
working hard to create opportunity and build community
…demands time and money.
The support of the Siren community has facilitated that work and helped support those commissions and opportunities and we can’t thank you enough.
You can become a Patron of Siren today and help us continue to challenge the status quo of sports media.
Thanks to the wonderful people who have joined our Patreon – we very much appreciate your support!
We also very much appreciate any support in sharing and amplifying the work we do. When you read and share the work of the women and non-binary people we commission, you help push the dial on sports media.