News
Common Grounds: Skateboarding, Learning and the Built Environment
17 May 2024 at UCL East Campus
The inaugural edition of Common Grounds: a new symposium dedicated to understanding skateboarding through practice based research. Supported by University College London and Goldsmiths.
Common Grounds draws together multi-modal approaches to research across different disciplines, focusing on how skateboarding frames ideas relating to placemaking, community and learning. Alongside examining how participatory design can be used as a vehicle for fostering a legacy of ownership and belonging within skateable spaces.
Programming across the day consisted of a keynote presentation, three panel discussions, a film screening, and a session skating the community designed skate dots at City Mill Pool Street. Common Grounds explores how creative and participatory approaches to community engagement can influence the design and use of public spaces, and how skate communities subsequently form around them.
The Common Grounds programme also seeks to generate a particular understanding of the embodied and sensory knowledges that contribute to our understanding of how learning takes place in skateable spaces.
Speakers:
Prof Iain Borden, UCL – author of Skateboarding and the City
Bedir Bekar, UCL – architect and engineer and lecturer
Ben Dixon, Goldsmiths – Postgraduate research, Goldsmiths Listening to skateboarding: a multimodal exploration of an urban development project in East London.
Ben Borthwick – Curator @primedesignplymouth and Head of Programme at Karst
Dr Sheryl Clark, Goldsmiths – author of Skateparks as Communities of Care
Tom Critchley – Goldsmiths – Postgraduate Research
John Dahlquist – Vice Principal of The Bryggeriets Gymnasium School, Malmo
Sam Elstub – Hackney Bumps and Betongpark – landscape architect
Sam Griffin – artist and co-founder City Mill Skate
Dr Sander Hølsgens, Leiden University – co-editor of Skate/Worlds: New Pedagogies for Skateboarding (w. Adelina Ong)
Chris Lawton – Skateboard GB
Stuart Maclure – Long Live Southbank and Betongpark
Marie Mayassi – founder Melanin Skate Gals and Pals
Harry Meadley – artist and director of Civic Skateboarding
Dr Paul O’Connor – Exeter University – author of Skateboarding and Religion
Prof Carrie Paechter – Nottingham Trent University – author of What’s it like to be a girl skateboarder? (with Stoodley, Keenan and Lawton)
Lucy Raemers – co-founder of The Ben Raemers Foundation
Dr Esther Sayers – Goldsmiths – co-founder City Mill Skate and author of Skateboarding, Time and Ethics
With remote interventions from:
Sophie Friedel – author of The Art of Living Sideways
Dr Indigo Willing, University of Sydney – author of Skateboarding, Power and Change (with Anthony Pappalardo)
City Mill Pool Street Jam – SUNDAY 25th JUNE!
⚠️SUNDAY 25th JUNE ⚠️
Save the date for the City Mill Pool Street Jam! 🗓️📝🎉
The day will start with free beginner coaching from 10am to 12pm. All ages, genders and abilities welcomed😃
Sign up for the afternoon Jam opens at 1PM. Sign up will close 15 minutes before your category starts! ⏰👀
At 1.30pm we will have a beginner priority obstacle course where you’ll only compete against yourself and fun is the aim of the game. 🔀😊
There will be three categories for the jam, split into 2 minute heats:
– 2pm under 16 girls and marginalised gender.
– 3pm under 16 boys.
– 4pm over 16 womxn and marginalised gender.
And to finish the day we will have a +16, open to all gender, CASH FOR BEST TRICK! 🔨💸
A Guided Tour of City Mill Pool Street
Feast your eyes and ears on a wonderful audio guided tour of City Mill Pool Street from our friend and Hackney Bumps legend, Sol Dhariwal 👀🔊🔀
Some of you may remember Ricky Oyola’s unforgettable guided tour of City Hall in Philadelphia many, many moons ago for 411 Video Magazine – well here’s our version!
Sol leaves no stone unturned – so make sure you turn your sound up for a full audio tour complete with added wallies, hippy jumps and even our rainbow rail in the mix. Sol shows us an exciting range of trick possibilities to recreate at City Mill Pool Street – now if it would only stop raining…🙏
Big shout out to Tom Lock too – for capturing Sol and our skate dots in all their sunny glory 🎥😎🛹
Video: A Guided Tour of City Mill Pool Street
Meet the City Mill Skate team – UCL
- UCL
- The Bartlett School of Architecture
- Betongpark
- Melanin Gals n’ Pals
- Free Skate Mag
- Vans
Sam Wilkinson, Head of Public Art and Cultural Engagement, UCL East
Iain Borden: Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Meet the City Mill Skate team – Betongpark
Daryl Nobbs, Lead Designer, Betongpark
Stuart Maclure, Development Manager, Betongpark
Meet the City Mill Skate team – Melanin Skate Gals & Pals
Marie Mayassi, Melanin Skate Gals & Pals
Meet the City Mill Skate team – Free Skate Mag
Will Harmon, Sam Ashley and Arthur Derrien, Free Skate Mag
City Mill Pool Street Opening Event!
Huge thanks to everyone who made it to our opening event for City Mill Pool Street! It was a fantastic day and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did 😍🎉
Without your support and interest, our project would never have been possible! 🙌
Check out our photo gallery of the skate dots getting put through their paces by a wide range of rippers, captured by the ever-talented Rafski and Keep Rolling ⚡️🔨📸
Extra props to Keep Rolling for putting a fantastic recap video edit of the day too!
Video: City Mill Pool Street Launch Event
Huge thanks also to Free Skate Mag , Vans ,Faruso and Jin , Signature Brew , UCL and Betongpark