2021 has been a big year for skateboarding, with a medal for Team GB’s youngest summer Olympian and multiple innovative and inspiring projects around the world that re-imagine how public space can engage young people in conversations about creativity, sustainability, innovation and inclusivity. This autumn, a newly pedestrianized part of The Strand, London, has become home to a trail of ‘skateable sculptures’ designed by Norwegian skatepark specialists Betongpark, who have recently exhibited work at Somerset House right next to installations from our city’s own community skateboarding organisation Skate Nottingham.
Nottingham was already leading the way in thinking innovatively about spaces, physical activity and design. Through the winter of 2020 and spring of 2021, local charity Ignite! and Skate Nottingham co-delivered the #InspiredBySkatespots project, funded by UK Research & Innovation, in collaboration with Nottingham College and Nottingham Trent University. More than one hundred local young people created speculative designs for a new ‘skate friendly’ public space at Sussex Street, at the foot of the Nottingham Contemporary, mentored by world-famous designer Rich Holland and young Chartered Structural Engineer Bedir Bekar (the two also recently collaborated to design the new outdoor skateable public space around Nike’s European HQ in the Netherlands). Young people from Sneinton and St Ann’s speak powerfully about how this project raised their aspirations to pursue creative, digital and built environment professions and trades in this film by Georgi Scurfield, which premiered at the 2021 Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity.
Inspired By Skate Spots from Skate Nottingham on Vimeo.
This was followed by a successful research grant application by Nottingham Trent University to The Leverhulme Trust to explore women and girls’ experiences of being skateboarders, which will focus on the inner city skatepark at King Edward Park, Sneinton as well as sites in other cities. Four NTU students were then funded by a bursary grant from the Scholarship Programme for Undergraduate Researchers (SPUR) to investigate case studies of successful multi-functional public spaces internationally, including Israels Plads (Copenhagen), the Place de la République (Paris) and the Riverside Museum of Transport (Glasgow) alongside spaces ‘found’ or informally adopted by skateboarders such as the London Southbank Undercroft and Sneinton Market Plaza. This work, by Luke Groom (BArch Architecture), Brandon Fuller and Thomas Roberts (BA Economics) and Nika Maric (BSc Sports Science and Management), helps provide Nottingham City Council and Skate Nottingham, along with other partners, a compelling evidence base for the development of Sussex Street as a space that can be innovative, inclusive, public and convivial.
The potential of Sussex Street has been picked up by award-winning mortgage lender Habito, who have expressed their interest to contribute funding towards the physical development of the space - including through collaboration with world-leading experts such as Betongpark and Bedir Bekar - as well as investing in the career and personal development of the local young people involved in the project. This is in addition to Flo Indoor Skatepark recently receiving investment to the value of £75,000 from Volunteer-it-Yourself, Skateboard GB and Persimmon Homes for a major refurbishment, paving the way for the Nottingham skatepark to become one of just four pilot talent pipeline ‘Hubs’, nurturing the next generation of Olympic and other international skateboarding talent. Along with a strong focus on inclusivity, including significant successes in engaging women and girls in skateboarding (49% of Skate Nottingham’s 2020-21 participants identified as women or girls, compared to just 16% nationally), this story has led Habito’s team to comment that Nottingham’s use of skateboarding is demonstrating “what a future city should be like” to other places in the UK.
Photo by Tom Quigley
All of this progress and potential is coming together this week during the second ‘Skateboarding in the City’ festival (the first being in summer 2019, when more than 600 local people took part, along with visitors from Finland funded by the University of Tampere and the Finnish Film Council). SITC II, which started on Friday 24 September, is a multi-venue festival of skate culture funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and the UK Science Festivals Network, and supported by Habito, Forty Two Shop and Skateboard GB.
A key element of the festival so far was a temporary pop-up exhibition of 10 Years of Sneinton Market, on the hoardings around the market, curated by Tom Quigley (Skate Nottingham and Leftlion Magazine) and Montana Nottingham, with artwork by Scarce (The Art of Football). This will be followed by a free jam on Wednesday 29 September from 2pm until 7pm at the UK’s first fully ‘legal’ DIY skatepark (built in partnership with Broxtowe Borough Council and Beeston Civic Society by Skate Nottingham and Betongpark alongside a team of volunteers of all ages), which revitalized a dilapidated tarmac play-area in Beeston Fields Recreation Ground. At the same time, The Carousel’s screen-printing masters Dizzy Ink will be hosting two days of t-shirt design and printing workshops.
On Thursday 30 September, Skate Nottingham and Ignite! will be hosting the Radical Places panel discussions at Metronome from 4pm until 8pm, digging deep into issues of inclusivity, regeneration, accessibility and gender with speakers including Bedir Bekar, Dr Esther Sayers (Goldsmiths University and the City Mill Skate project at the UCL East Campus/Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park), Dr Seth Kirby (NTU Sports Science), Tom Critchley (doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths and also member of the NGO Concrete Jungle Foundation), Professor Carrie Paechter (Director of NTU’s Centre for Children, Young People and Families), Dr Dan O’Neill (skater and social historian at the University of Nottingham) and young local skaters and NTU students. Spaces are limited, so book your tickets fast here.
The festival will end with film screenings at Metronome on Friday 1 October, the Nottingham Open competition at Flo Indoor Skatepark on Saturday 2 October, and a comic book workshop, where participants will create graphic novels inspired by skateboarding with Dr Matt Green (University of Nottingham) and Dr Nicola Streeten (multi-award-winning graphic novelist). You can book a place at this workshop here.
Skate Nottingham will be taking over the Creative Quarter Instagram account throughout the day on Friday 1 October, so you can catch up with much more of the exciting stuff that’s going on in the city this week.
Photo by Tom Quigley
