This exhibition traces the countercultural history of skateboarding

Southbank is arguably the British skate scene’s most famous cultural export to the international skate community. It’s what the Embarcadero waterfront is to San Francisco; what the Milano Centrale station is to Milan; what the Brooklyn Banks are to New York City. Its brutalist columns and cavernous banks have deep lore stretching back to the early 1970s.

Back in 2013, the Southbank Centre had planned to demolish the space, using it instead for retail development. After 13 years of Tory austerity, it’s increasingly rare to see community spaces saved from the hands of private landlords. But the Long Live Southbank campaign was launched to save the much-loved spot and, despite significant obstacles, it was saved.

One of the key pieces at the Design Museum’s exhibition, Skateboard – the first UK exhibition dedicated to mapping the evolution of the skateboard – is a deck made by London skate brand Palace, who collaborated with Long Live Southbank to produce a run of boards supporting the campaign. Preserving history is a theme throughout the show. “I think this exhibition could have been done at any point in the last 20 years,” Jonathan Olivares, the show’s curator tells Dazed.

The history of the skateboard has often been told via the graphic art that decorates the underside of decks. Skateboarding history has also been meticulously documented through video and remains the primary medium of how skateboarding is historicised today. Yet, the design history of the skateboard has never been academically recorded and plenty of facts are up for debate. Who designed specific innovations when and where is hard to pinpoint, with multiple claims of origin. “Many egos are on the line,” Olivares succinctly explains.

The story of skateboard history through design mimics the boom and bust cycle of capitalism itself. It started in the 1950s when Californian surfers modified roller skate trucks with wooden boards, to be able to practise surfing on concrete, before growing in popularity through the sixties. But a wave of accidents due to faulty design saw skateboarding banned in several American cities. Design improvements in the 1970s saw the interest in skateboarding grow again, and this time it developed its own specific cultural identity separate from surfing.

However, by the end of the 70s, many commercial skateparks closed over safety concerns. The lack of parks pushed skateboarders into the streets, in search of curbs, ledges and rails. The economic recession at the start of the 1990s also hit the industry hard and skateboarding retreated into the shadows where its underground and countercultural aesthetic, maintained by independent skateboard brands, set the tone for modern skateboarding as we know it. Skateboard design was increasingly standardised, while graphics became political and leaned into a punk ethos. Natas Kaupas’ ‘hanging Klansman’ board is a great example of the skateboard as a tool for change. Boards became flatter, while the symmetrical ‘popsicle’ shape dominates and remains the default board today.

The design of the skateboard has been perfected in the last two decades and it’s unlikely that there will be any more significant breakthroughs. Its development as an industry likely lies away from technological innovation and instead in its spaces and communities. A number of charities such as SkatePal, Skateistan and the Uganda Skateboard Society have been using skateboarding to help young people across the Middle East and Africa, transforming the skateboard into a tool for empowerment.

Meanwhile, community sites continue to be revived. Remarkably, after Southbank was saved, the LLSB campaign was successful in crowdfunding an expansion to the space to better reflect what it looked like before decades of expansion had resulted in a slow reduction in the size of the undercroft. New York’s Brooklyn Banks is another iconic spot that is about to be restored to its former glory. The banks were fenced off in 2010 and work began on uprooting its famous red bricks. However, with help from Tony Hawk’s Skatepark Project, the banks are coming back as part of a wider regeneration project of the area under the Manhattan Bridge. Closer to home, Nottingham’s Tram Line Spot is a new skate space built under an underused tram viaduct as part of a transformation of the Broad Marsh area. Sheffield’s once-rundown Exchange Street has also seen resurgence since the introduction of a skate space.

It’s not been as easy for skateboarders in Manchester to have their own spaces formally recognised. The Labour-majority Manchester City Council has given the green light to redevelop an area that includes the thriving DIY spot ‘Gooseside’. This is the latest setback for the city’s thriving scene, after the erasure of the popular Gasworks and increased policing of the Urbis ledges. All is not lost though. Jamie Reed, a Gooseside regular who’s also involved in a larger-scale discussion to bring more skate spaces to the city, says there’s grounds for optimism. Though the council has historically “lacked communication” with the local scene, they’ve allowed the skaters to stay while development plans slowly nudge forward. There’s a growing appetite for better spaces, “it’s a glimmer of hope for better skating in Manchester.”

The fight to save these spaces and their adjacent communities continues but exhibitions like this are crucial in ensuring skateboarding’s history is preserved for future generations. With the advent of more female, LGBTQ+ and POC-focused skate collectives, it feels that skateboarding is being democratised further. More than ever, it’s important to collect and preserve these histories. Despite this, at its core, skateboarding is an activity that everyone should have access to. “Skateboarding thrives when it isn't taken too seriously,” Olivares says, “at its root, skateboarding is essentially riding around on a wooden toy.”

Skateboard is running at the Design Museum until June 2, 2024.

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