When Esther Sayers, 53, had a go on her son’s skateboard in her kitchen six years ago, she had no idea what the moment would lead to. “Never in a million years did I think this would happen when I first stepped on the board. I didn’t know what skateboarding was, apart from just rolling on this thing with wheels. I just liked the feeling in my body of rolling along the pavement. I liked it as a mode of transport to school with the kids, but I didn’t think I would ever go to a skatepark. I had no idea that there was this culture and community,” says Sayers. Now, skateboarding has become a huge part of her life, and it’s something she does at least once or twice a week, fitting in sessions around family commitments and her work as an academic.
Initially, Sayers learned to skateboard with her children, and while she still loves having this shared hobby with them, she’s also developed her own community in the skateboarding world. It started with other skateboarders in her area in Hackney, but the community she’s found most recently is London Skate Mums. “It’s very freeing for me to skate with other women who have similar constraints around their lives. I think London Skate Mums occupy a space in skateboarding that wasn’t there before,” she says.
While London Skate Mums is unique, it is one of many thriving skateboard communities in London right now. In the past few years, there’s been a boom in people taking up the sport. For some, their skateboarding journey started during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when people were increasingly looking for activities that they could do outside. But the fact that skateboarding became an official Olympic sport in 2021 and will now feature for a second time in Paris 2024 — with competitions taking place at the Place de La Concorde — has helped raise its profile. According to Skateboard GB, the number of people skateboarding in the UK has risen by between nine and 11 per cent since the 2021 Olympics, and the event also prompted a 35 per cent rise in the number of searches for skateboard lessons. After her gold medal win at the 2023 World Skateboarding Championships, Olympic British skater Sky Brown (now 15) has no doubt only added to the hype — as well as increasing the visibility of female skaters.
Stereotypes of skateboarding have long conjured up images of teenage boys practising tricks in their local skateparks, but these days, as Brown’s growing profile has served to prove, that’s not necessarily the case. Skateboard GB estimates there are 750,000 people who skateboard in the UK, and 22 per cent of these are female. The number of women skateboarding is indeed rising, too — the numbers were up by 20 per cent from 2022 to 2023.
The evolution of the skateboard is explored in an exhibition at the Design Museum. The show is the first major UK showcase to chart how skateboard designs have progressed from the 1950s to the present day. As well as the aesthetics, it also digs into the communities at the heart of the skate scene. “It’s an exhibition about design but the fact is that, when you put the skateboarder on the skateboard, that’s when the magic happens. There’s nothing like it in the world. Skateboarding has always had a very unique community,” says the exhibition’s co-curator Tory Turk.
While some Londoners, like Sayers, have taken up skateboarding later in life, others have rediscovered their childhood passion for the sport. Kellie Simpson, 42, first went to a skatepark when she was 10 years old, tagging along with her cousin. She loved it so much that she spent two years saving up for her own skateboard. After that, she went to the skate park nearly every day. But being a girl in the skate scene in the Nineties wasn’t easy. “I didn’t see another girl skateboarding for about two or three years,” says Simpson. “It was a weird experience. I got bullied a lot. Boys would say: ‘What are you doing skateboarding? It’s not for girls.’ But I was determined to do this thing that I loved so much.”
She carried on skating but, when she became pregnant with her daughter at 24, she took a break which ended up lasting about 12 years. In 2017, Simpson finally got back on a skateboard. “It was like a warm hug from an old friend,” she says. But something had changed in the time that she’d been away from the scene. “There were so many more girl skaters, I couldn’t believe it. It was incredible,” she says.
But while there were more women and girls skating, Simpson noticed that none of them seemed to know each other. “I started up a crew of girls called Girls Can’t Skate Crew. We’d go out skating and pick up girls as we were going around. Then, I created this Whatsapp group and I would hook people up and they’d go skating together,” she says. Since then, the group has grown from eight people to a community of 200 women and girls. Through the group, they get together for events, meet up to skate, and encourage women and girls to do things they might not want to do alone. For Simpson, creating this community has been hugely empowering. “It’s about having your girls with you and not feeling isolated or lonely. It helps you push yourself, too,” she says.
Skateboarding groups are popping up all over the city, carving out space for marginalised and under-represented communities. The appeal of finding like-minded people and creating an environment for them to thrive in the skateboarding world was what prompted Marie-Ermelinda Mayassi, 27, to set up Melanin Skate Gals & Pals, a group for people of colour and the LGBTQIA+ community. Mayassi first started skateboarding when she was at university in Leeds, but was disheartened at the lack of diversity in skateboarding. When she moved to London, she set up Melanin Skate Gals & Pals. “I didn’t want to just wait around to find the community that I wanted to join. I was motivated to start my own community,” she says. “I asked people of colour and people from the queer community if they wanted to come and skate. In March 2021, we had our first meet-up at the Olympic Park. We’ve been doing weekly skate sessions since then.”
Since starting the group in 2021, Mayassi has organised sessions for around 1,500 skateboarders, and the WhatsApp group has 400 members. “I think the main barrier for us is the lack of representation. There’s the idea that it’s a predominantly white, male sport, whereas I think that skateboarding is very queer in the way that there are no norms. I think the sport is new enough that it can be shaped by the people who are joining the skate community,” says Mayassi.
For Mayassi, changing perceptions about who gets to be a skateboarder is key. “It’s about people being able to come as they are without fear of being judged or without fear of not belonging. We’re showing that we all deserve to take up space. Being in a group of people from the same demographic empowers you in your everyday life. It helps you to be more confident because you’ve had spaces that are dedicated to you, and only to you,” she says.
A desire to remove barriers to entry in the skateboarding world is why Agnieszka Aga Wood, 48, set up Everyone on Boards. Based in Waltham Forest, it’s a social enterprise that’s all about creating skateboarding opportunities for disadvantaged kids and families that might not otherwise have access. Wood started skating in 2018 with her kids, and wanted to share her new-found passion with more people. While she would take her kids to girls’ skate sessions at House of Vans in Waterloo (which has since sadly closed down), she wondered about the people who had no idea that these places existed. “I was thinking: how can we open this opportunity for the next generation?” she says.
A few years since launching, Everyone on Boards has hosted sessions for around 4,000 people. Realising that parents might not have time to take their kids to the skatepark, they often pop up in more accessible places, like in an open space by the local Co-op. “It’s about keeping it as accessible as possible. I believe in free skateboarding and, if you want to skate, I believe that you will find a way, that the skateboarding will find you,” she says. “We have people from the age of five up to 50-year-old mums. It’s about creating that network.”
While skateboarding obviously provides an opportunity for physical exercise, many people say that it’s more about the sense of community and the positive impact on their mental health. “The way I see it, it’s like meditation. It takes you out of your head. When you’re skateboarding, you don’t think about anything else. And then there’s the camaraderie that you get with other people,” says Simpson. Girls Can’t Skate Crew members have told Simpson that being part of a group has helped them to open up, too. “Some girls suffer from anxiety and don’t want to go to places alone, but if we say we’re all going to meet up, they overcome that,” she says.
This is something that chimes with Wood and Sayers, too. “As a mother, skating for even half-an-hour is like mental therapy because you focus on yourself — you’re not mum any more, it’s just about you,” says Wood. For Sayers, skateboarding helped get her out of the house after a period of working part-time and spending a lot of time at home with her young children. “To push myself out of the house and into the world into situations that challenged me was really valuable for my psyche as well as my fitness,” she says. “It’s a joyful activity. The feeling is unlike anything else. You’re being propelled — you’re in control but you’re slightly not and there’s something very compelling about that.”
As these groups prove, London is full of thriving, inclusive skateboarding communities. “I think it’s the best time for skateboarding. There are so many opportunities,” says Wood. And what advice would she give to newbies to the scene? “Don’t give up. You will fall down but then you need to stand up. Skateboarding is about building resilience.”
Skateboard is at the Design Museum until 19 May 2024
