We went to the Social Skate Summit!

Since we started The Boarding School I've been following the amazing work of Skateistan and the Good Push Alliance. They produce some really good resources for social skateboarding projects and give young people round the world access to education programmes through skateboarding.

This year, through collaboration with some of their long standing partners (@KeepRolling_Co) and the good people of UCL East in London, they put on the first of it's kind; The Social Skate Summit.

A convention of international skateboarding projects that aim to better the lives of participants through education, youthwork, physical activity, wellbeing, and much more. Here's a breakdown of what happened:

Day1:

They kicked things off with a community mixer event. We got a chance to roam around meeting some fantastic people and hearing about the projects they've started and share all of our work of course.

Then we split off into smaller groups with specific focus on topics like: Inclusion and equalities; Leadership and management; funding strategies; youth work and engaging younger people.

We then had a break for lunch... which really meant heading 30 seconds down the road to City Mill Skatepark. City Mill is the most unusual skatepark I've ever visited, all the obstacles were designed and built first in cardboard/clay/tinfoil by a variety of different community groups as part of a groundbreaking consultation project. This way the park truly represents the vision of the user groups, rather than some tokenistic "do you want this ramp, or this ramp" experience.

Anyway, its was blisteringly hot and shade was limited, so I went off in search of food.

The afternoon started back up with some panel talks. The first around building spaces where everyone belongs and the second about creating sustainability in projects so they can keep creating outcomes for years to come. The experts on the panels gave some truly inspiring insights into their work and the challenges they've had to overcome just to make it happen. This included 21 year old Houda, who had managed to fight against traditional gender roles in Morocco to start skateboarding sessions in her home town for young girls (We watched her film on day 2, and it was mind-blowing).

After all this! we jumped on some crowded tube trains and headed to Bay66 for a free session put on by the organisers, just for us! Bay66 looks a bit different from when I last went some 20+ years ago, and ended up leading Ben the wrong way to get it lol.

The session was hot and manic, with some great skaters, but all really supportive and super fun.

Day2:

Started with some more panel talks. The first of which focused on collective impact, and we as social skate projects can showcase the work we are doing. Commonly called MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning). The talk was really interesting and we got to hear some impressive stats pulled from the Good Push annual survey. 116 projects in 64 countries, with a combined budget of over £5.5 million!

Then we heard from two more panels exploring physical and mental health in more depth. It was particularly interesting to hear the perspectives of female led organisations talking about how menstrual cycles can affect skateboarding, and WCMX riders talk about adapting spaces to their needs.

We then had to almost run out the venue at 5pm as the nearby West Ham game was finishing and 70'000 football fans were about to decend on our tube station! We heading to The South Bank Centre's Undercroft - a mecca for skateboarding for over 40 years and what some consider to be the spiritual home of UK skateboarding. The South Bank Centre are currently running an exhibition about the history of the Undercroft called Skate50, which has free entry with a skateboard lol. The exhibition was really cool. The video from the London Skate Mums was a particular highlight having spent the weekend meeting them, hearing them talk about their work and skating with them. They were even featured on Channel 4 news when we were there! Also worthy of mention was a sound scape piece by Beatrice Dillon, made up of recordings from the undercroft you could shut your eyes and it just became music in your mind.

Day3:

Finally our last day. We met Jay Mandario, owner of CJ's Skatepark and founder of the International Skateboard Certification programme in Canada. He talked us through the ISCP before we split into small groups to work through some scenarios. Following a little online work, both Ben and I will now be qualified ISCP coaches at level 1.

It was difficult not to feel overwhelmed by the whole experience. So many cool people that all live and breathe the same passions as you and working towards the same goals.

My big take aways will be the new perspectives I've discovered talking to so many about their projects. The challenges they've had to, and still are overcoming. We've hopefully made some good connections with other groups and will have to arrange exchange-trips out to these projects in the future with our young people. I've also given myself the personal aim of fundraising for a Bristol WCMX chair, that can be hired or used by anyone in the Bristol area to try out WCMX and have it taken to the skatepark to meet them. The chairs cost over £5k!!!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this little recap of our visit to the Social Skatre Summit, we hope there will be many many more!