Urban Pamphleteer #8: Skateboardings published online

Urban Pamphleteer is a publication series produced in collaboration between UCL Urban Laboratory and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Each issue addresses a theme and set of questions that have recently surfaced in urban debate, framing contemporary challenges historically, and bringing together a diversity of text and visual contributions, written in an accessible way, to address audiences who are affected by the topics raised and/or are in a position to enact change.

Urban Pamphleteer #8: Skateboardings gathers together activists, artists, and educators who show nuance on the effect skateboarding can have to positively influence social and urban change. The lived experiences of skateboarders of colour, of diverse genders and sexualities, of different mobilities and class backgrounds, intersect with the politics of their everyday lives and negotiations with public and private space. With this in mind, the issue asks: What does a skateable space look and feel like, and for whom? Does skateboarding benefit from accessible urban design, and if so, why? Can skateboarders be good partners for cities?

The contributions include:

• Find a Curb - Ted Barrow
• Towards Inclusive Skate Scholarship and Activism - Paul O'Connor
• City Mill Skate: Skateboarding, Architecture and Community - Esther Sayers and Sam Griffin
• To Be Read / Allowed - Kyle Beachy
• Towards Radical Empathy - Tommy Carroll and Luke Cianciotto
• Feint Lines: Notes on the Creation of a Skateboard Choreography - Dani Abulhawa
• Queering Skateable Space: How Dispersing Skatespots Defuses Toxic Masculinity - Tobias Coughlin-Bogue
• 2025: Skating the Smart City - Claire Alleaume
• Skateboarding and Mobility: Felipe Nunes interviewed by Ben Rubin - Felipe Nunes and Ben Rubin
• Crystal Palace Skatepark: Complexity and Contradiction - Iain Borden
• Instaposts - Jilleen Liao
• Skateboarding into the Sun - Kava Garcia Vasquez
• Can Skateboarders in Nottingham be Good Partners to the City Without Being 'Shock Troops of Gentrification'? - Chris Lawton
• Louisa Menke - Louisa Menke
• Like a Dog - Tara Jepsen
• Long Live Southbank - Long Live Southbank

The issue was guest edited by Thomas Callan-Riley and Sander Hölsgens, with series editors Ben Campkin and Rebecca Ross, and design by Guglielmo Rossi. The print edition will be launced and distributed later in 2020.

Further links:

• Read Urban Pamphleteer #8 online
• Read previous editons of Urban Pamphleteer
• Donate to the Urban Pamphleteer series

Image credits: Max Colson / UCL Urban Laboratory