Club news
Written by: Joe
The Lewes FC community has received five nominations across two awards ceremonies for our activities during the 2024/25 season.
We are nominated twice in the prestigious Football Business Awards:
Sustainability Category
• Lewes FC x Who Gives a Crap
Sponsorship / Partnership of the Year
• Lewes FC x Who Gives a Crap
We have also received three nominations in the inaugural Festival of Women’s Football Awards:
Sponsorship Deal of the Year
• Lewes FC x Who Gives A Crap
• Lewes FC x Charlotte Colbert
Community Initiative of the Year
• Tony Kalume and the Lewes FC vegetable garden
Our impact work is not geared up to win awards but it is a welcome recognition of the hard work and dedication of our volunteers, partners, and staff to receive these nominations.
Football Business Awards
Lewes FC went viral last summer when we launched our new front-of-shirt partner Who Gives A Crap alongside our vivid away shirt. The kit launch – set at Charleston House – generated millions of views and officially launched a collaborative partnership that has grown from strength to strength over the season.
Lewes FC and Who Gives A Crap hosted a footBALL at the start of the season, where supporters were encouraged to attend a match in ball gowns and tuxedos.
The strong of Lewes FC’s partnership with Who Gives A Crap comes from the toilet paper company’s dedication to delivering impact. WGAC donates 50% of all profits to WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) initiatives via the Crap Foundation. This supports organisations that improve access to water and sanitation in developing countries – an issue that has a particularly adverse effect on women and girls.
Festival of Women’s Football Awards
Meanwhile, Lewes FC have been nominated three times in the Festival of Women’s Football Awards. The club launched an unprecedented sponsorship campaign alongside artist Charlotte Colbert in July 2024 designed to reaffirm its position as a trailblazer in gender equality within the sport.
See Us As We Are sought to continue Lewes FC’s groundbreaking Equality FC initiative and demand women footballers, fans, and the culture of the women’s game be seen on their own terms – not as a lesser version of the men’s game. The campaign aimed to draw new audiences to the game, particularly women who have felt historically unwelcome in the world of football.
The club’s radical solution? Commercialising a previously untapped space: the women’s preseason. In a first-of-its-kind partnership, the front of the women’s preseason shirts was sold to Colbert, whose distinctive “eye” motif symbolises visibility, dreams, and a reimagined cultural lens for women’s football. The sponsorship package included bespoke kits, tracksuits, a pitch-side billboard, and poster designs that were distributed around Lewes and featured in matchday programmes.
>> Buy See Us As We Are x Lewes FC kit here
Meanwhile, the Lewes FC vegetable garden – affectionately known as Brad’s Pitt – has flourished above the “eye” that sits in the corner of the Dripping Pan.
Tony and the gang have worked tirelessly over the season to improve the garden’s layout and invite more volunteers to the group. The garden produces seasonal vegetables and fruit trees are set to be planted. Players who earn Player of the Match awards receive freshly-harvested veg as a reward, so long as something’s ripe for harvest!
The garden, alongside our flower garden and solar panels, is a cornerstone of Lewes FC’s sustainability and environmental commitments, and helped inspire our reusable cups scheme launched in the summer.
Further plans for the vegetable garden include developing better pollinating spaces for bees and butterflies, while maintaining the ‘wild’ homes that attract all levels of nature during the season (and with excellent views of the Pan!).
The Festival of Women’s Football Awards takes place on Wednesday 23 April in Charing Cross, London.
The Football Business Awards takes place on Friday 9 May at The Brewery, London.
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Lewes FC extends a special thank you to Kitlocker, the club’s kit suppliers, for bringing both our See Us As We Are and WGAC away shirt designs to life with care and precision. The See Us As We Are shirts and tracksuits produced in collaboration with Colbert’s studio became not only standout visual symbols of the campaign, but also cherished pieces of wearable protest embraced by players and fans alike. Our WGAC away shirt is now an iconic design.
Despite facing a challenging preseason—marked by relegation, the departure of most of the women’s squad and coaching staff, and budget cuts, the club’s values have remained resolute over the course of the season. While it was a risk to build campaigns around newly forming teams, the visual power of Charlotte’s work, the boldness of the WGAC partnership, and the integrity of Lewes FC’s mission kept the momentum alive.