Jesse and Wes: This whole research project has actually given us a responsibility to actually do this. I suppose it’s helped to take us more seriously. as users of public space.
Katy: What happens when you unleash the collective power of diverse communities, partners, research, and creativity? How can we unlock innovation across communities to build a stronger, fairer UK?
Welcome to the Creative Communities Podcast, a series platforming extraordinary examples of research partnerships. Using arts, culture, and creativity to tackle the big opportunities and challenges facing our country today.
My name is Professor Katy Shaw, and I’m Director of the AHRC Creative Communities Programme, a national project exploring the potential of culture and cross sector cocreation to deliver inclusive innovation in the devolved contexts of our four nations.
In this new series, we’ll embark on a journey across the UK And hear from communities who are using their unique talents and expertise to take on tomorrow. We’ll explore how creativity and cultural research can empower us to build a stronger, more resilient UK. Across the series, we’ll hear five stories of change, one from each of our Community Innovation Practitioners, or CIPs for short.
They’re based in Liverpool, Swansea, Glasgow, Belfast, and Portrush, and they’ll show us how cultural research and development is helping to level up their communities.
In this episode, we’re in Portrush, Northern Ireland, with Jim, exploring creative co production between skateboarders and videographers, who are using their creativity to document their community and influence their surroundings.
Jim: I’m going to get you to put on Team Fresh again.
(Music plays in the background)
Jim: Hello. My name’s Jim Donaghey. I’m a Community Innovation Practitioner and Research Fellow based at Ulster University’s Coleraine campus.
Portrush is a place I know well. Despite it being a fairly small seaside town, it has long boasted a lively alternative cultural scene, in terms of both music and sport, and that’s something I’ve been closely involved with.
This research project, more so than any of my previous work, has really brought me close to home, and that’s meant some exciting opportunities, as well as a few challenges.
This episode, of the Creative Communities Podcast dives into the heart of the skateboarding scene in Portrush and tells the story of my Community Innovation Practitioner Research Project, working with skateboarders and skate videographers and learning from the unique perspective they have on the world around them.
In our partnership with this creative community, we’ve been able to offer access to the resources and technical support of Ulster University’s School of Communication and Media. And the skateboarding community, in turn, has welcomed me as a trusted collaborator. It’s been said that Portrush is the capital of skateboarding in Northern Ireland.
This research project builds on nearly thirty years of campaigning by the community here to get Portrush a skatepark. The Community Innovation Practitioner, or CIP, project is all about making useful interventions alongside the local skateboarding culture and bolstering their campaign for a skatepark. That process relies on dialogue and being responsive to the needs of the skateboarding community.
Our academic angle and the support of the university has provided a fresh perspective on the long running skatepark campaign. As we’ll hear from research participants in this episode, the lack of action by the local borough council to meet skateboarders needs in Portrush has generated a level of This project provides the opportunity to take a wider view and reassess strategies towards getting a skate park in Portrush.
The tenacity of the Portrush skateboarding community and the inventive do it yourself culture that they’ve cultivated is something we celebrate, even if Portrush doesn’t have a skate park yet. My research approach taps into the skateboarding community’s own creativity. That engagement is built upon meaningful research relationships.
Through that co-creative process. Those relationships are deepened while relationships with new segments of the community have been formed. This episode is about those research relationships and the opportunities and challenges of deploying research as intervention on your own doorstep. In particular, I’ll tell you about our initiative to refurbish the skaters’ ramps at Station Square.
This is a place that connects to the skateboarding heritage of Portrush. It’s a place that showcases the vitality of contemporary skateboard culture, but it’s also a place where the issues faced by skaters are most evident, and the ramps themselves are an ongoing point of contention with the Borough Council.
As we’ll hear, the skateboarding community in Portrush is thriving. It’s been part and parcel of the identity of the town for decades now, thanks to the deep cultural connections with surfing. But Portrush still doesn’t have a purpose-built skate park, despite almost thirty years of campaigning. Since the first meetings between local skateboarders and the Borough Council in the mid nineteen nineties, there have been a couple of occasions when the skate park came tantalisingly close to becoming a reality.
But despite the persisting popularity of skateboarding, the last ten years have seen changes in the wider context of Portrush as a tourist town. These changes have arguably made that goal even more difficult to achieve, especially with regard to the Borough Council’s strategy to sell off public land.
The Super Council of Causeway Coast and Glens was formed in 2015, and in their own words, quoting here from public documents including their 2020 Land and Property Policy, the 2016 Terms of Reference for the formation of a Capital Asset Realisation Team, and the 2019 Estate Strategy, the Council takes a proactive approach to disposing of unused and redundant land and property.
Their argument is that making unused land and property available to the open market allows the private sector to bring them back into productive use. And they specifically highlight that even a small parcel of land could be of considerable value in seaside towns including Ballycastle, Portrush, Port Stewart and Castle Rock.
The skaters’ demand for public land on which to build a skatepark in Portrush bump up against this drive to intensively resortify the town. Skateboarding’s status as an Olympic sport and the inclusion of skateboarding in the GCSE physical education curriculum in Northern Ireland are markers of the increased legitimacy of skateboarding in the popular consciousness.
But skateboarders’ conforming use of street furniture and promenades in Portrush continues to bring them into conflict with the Borough Council in terms of how public space should be used and by whom. So we’re presented with an interesting research context. Portrush is well recognised as a skateboarding town, but this status is not celebrated by the local authorities.
The Foundational Tourism and Destination Management Strategy, drawn up by the new council in 2015, focuses most of its attention on golf, though surfing does make an appearance there too, while skateboarding is not mentioned at all, and nor does it feature in any of the council’s sports development strategies.
Gabrielle works at a cafe in Portrush and her perspective sums up the typical sense of skateboarding as an ingrained part of the fabric of the town.
Gabrielle: Skateboarders have been in Portrush, as long as I can remember. I remember my cousins taking me skating whenever I was, like, two or three. So, it’s always been part of the daily life in Portrush. More so in the summertime, whenever the weather’s a bit nicer, a bit drier.
Jim: She also has concerns about the local council’s attitude to skateboarding
Gabrielle: I don’t want them to make like, their go to is always to like, enclose people. I don’t think skating is one of those enclosing projects to be honest.
Jim: Gabrielle is referring there to the fencing off of Station Square in autumn of 2022. Metal barriers were erected by the council, along with signage asserting that the area was being temporarily permitted as a place for skateboarding. This temporary concession from the council was won thanks to a huge community outcry after the council confiscated all the ramps and rails from the square in August of 2022.
The public response forced the council to return the ramps, drawing up a Memorandum of Understanding for use of Station Square as a temporary skate park. The ramp confiscation was a reminder of the typical experience of previous generations of skaters in Portrush but came as a shock to younger skaters and their families.
The effect was to refocus the community’s energy on the Get Portrush a Skate Park campaign, and this incident was also the spark that led to my conversations with local skater and videographer Selene Brown, eventually developing into this research project. Causeway Association of Urban Sport, or CAUS for short, have been contributing to the Get Portrush Escape Park campaign as a lobby group, and have been important partners for my research too, as I’ll explain a bit later.
Daniella Morelli Kerr owns a business in Portrush, and her son is a keen skateboarder. She gives a sense of the public mood around the issue.
Daniella: All the publicity, from CAUSE especially about Get Portrush a Skatepark has made local people especially think, well, what, there’s so many young people that want to get involved in that scene now, and why not make a, a place for them where they can hang out together.
They’re not doing any harm at the end of the day, they just want to skate, and they’re, some of them are so passionate about it. It’s such a shame that they don’t have anywhere to go and, and do that. But this has become a focal point now in the town. The amount of tourists that stop and watch the skating in the summer is amazing.
Jim: Murray Bell is a local architect who has been outspoken on the skateboarding issue. He remembers various frustrated efforts to secure a skate park for Portrush dating back more than two decades.
Murray: Twenty years ago, in 2001, 2002, there was a degree of activity and effort to get the skate park established for Portrush and I attended a public meeting with a number of local folks talking about the potential benefit of the skate park.
That’s the bottom line here, is that we’ve made no progress and worse than that, the skaters are offended and hurt, and we urgently need to find a solution to this problem. The proof now, categorically is that skate and urban sport and inline skating and BMXing is here to stay. And actually, more than that, it’s actually vital for young people.
It’s an outdoor sport, it’s a fresh air sport, it’s an activity which gets young people connecting with each other, learning things. As a family, we were conscious that the skate voice, or the urban sports voice, was being suppressed or being de-pressed. So there was a desire then to speak up for the skaters.
Jim: He argues a solution is overdue.
Murray: I think there’s a need for council representatives to get behind this and finally bring it to bear, to make it happen. Yes, to make it happen in the right way, but not to repeat the mistakes of the past. I mean, we really are beyond those moments where we have skate stoppers. I mean, who ever thought of that term and that we would allow that in our urban environment?
Jim: The skate stoppers that Murray’s talking about are those metal balls or clips that are typically welded onto benches and walls to prevent skateboarders from grinding or sliding along their edges. They’re a common example of what’s referred to as hostile architecture, used to discourage skaters from reimagining public space and getting creative with mundane bits of street furniture.
Fred, who is a regular at Station Square, recognises the struggles of the long running Get Portrush a Skate Park campaign, but wonders why other boroughs across Northern Ireland have supported their skateboard scenes, why Portrush has been left out.
Fred: Absolutely. It should have been the first, but I can only say that it must be something to do with either council funding, council backing, whatever, whereas the other boroughs clearly have that backing and support whereas we don’t.
Jim: Fred is optimistic about future prospects, with hopes that the council may be beginning to improve its attitude towards skateboarding.
Fred: I would say though it has been positive in the last year or so, especially by getting this spot, and then the council working hand in hand with the local community and putting forward, even just the insurance. And saying look, tell you what, you can use it. It’s beneficial for the youth, and for grown-ups. It’s a safe space. They’re trying, I think, to do the best they can, but there’s always room for improvement.
Jim: Alright, so you think, actually, that, old story of animosity between the council and the skaters
Fred: I think it’s improved. I think, definitely. I think, possibly, it could be a case of just, a changed mindset towards the skateboard community, or just change of personnel within that committee in the council, uh, and more people see the benefit of it. of what we’re trying to achieve here.
Jim: One of the interventions of the CIP pilot research project has been to profile the heritage of skateboarding culture in Portrush.
Slaine Brown’s collection of video footage of skateboarding in Portrush has been at the heart of that. He’s been a key research partner in the project, and we’ll hear from him later on. Together, we produce a series of short videos remembering and celebrating particular skate spots around Portrush. One of the most important of those spots is the Amphitheatre, known to most as the Ampey, which has been a focal point for skateboarding since the 1990s.
The redevelopment of the public realm around the amphitheatre by the Borough Council in the 2010s made it less skateable because of the rough surface that was laid down and the removal of ledges and steps. The new resort aesthetic of the space was designed to be tourist friendly but it’s not so good for skateboarding.
However, this same redevelopment made the adjacent station square much more skateable. It had previously been the site of a go kart track. The square features numerous ledges of different heights, which are ideal for beginners and seasoned skaters alike. It has smooth ish surfaces and seating for spectators to gather and watch the skateboarding.
Which is not to say that the Square is a purpose-built skate park by any means. Since then, and especially after the lifting of Covid pandemic restrictions, Station Square has become recognised as a valuable skate spot in the town, with DIY made ramps and rails lending the space a sense of semi permanence, despite its ambiguous status and contested use.
Josh Keehan owns the Igloo Pizza Van on Station Square and is supportive of the skateboarding community’s presence there.
Josh: Creates such a, there’s a real nice sense of community around here with people of that age that are into urban sports. And they congregate around here, like, almost daily. Anytime the weather’s dry, there is an urban sports community around here.
And for that to be taken away, leaves a massive gap in Portrush where it’s just not the same. The station square is perfect for that and the people that are here that are involved in it, they do take care of it as best they can. Anytime they’re out, we’ve been here for, this is our fourth year here and the amount of times I’ve seen the people that are coming down to skate, they get out brushes, they sweep the place.
Try and keep it as tidy as possible with the public in mind as well. So yeah, it would be a huge loss if it were to go from Station Square. It’s part of the town now, I think.
Jim: Alan Simpson is Portrush’s biggest cheerleader, posting online under the moniker Port Magic. He celebrates the impact of skateboarding on Station Square, away from its recent history as a place marred by anti-social drinking and violence.
Alan: It has changed immeasurably, because it’s now probably the most family orientated space in the area. Not just Portrush, because we’re sitting here today, and you look around, and there’s skaters as young as two years old, and they’re skating away, they’re enjoying themselves, and their parents are sitting watching them, and their grandparents are sitting watching them.
And it is, it’s a friendly environment, it has changed completely from that anti-social to a very social environment where it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, what age you are, even if you’re not interested in urban sports, skateboarding, BMX, whatever, this skate space adds colour, it adds vibrancy, it adds life.
Jim: The council suggested in spring of 2024 that they would invest some resources in Station Square, and have started to replace the rusted metal barriers that fence the area in. But Alan thinks a DIY effort is the best way forward.
Alan: I wouldn’t hold my breath as far as wanting other people to do stuff.
Because if we wait for council to do things, I think I remember the first committee was something like thirty odd years ago when I was in, and things haven’t really changed that much, apart from the fact that it’s now, People power and a lot of good people behind the scenes. I’m an old punk at heart.
It’s DIY culture, and it’s proved that the embryonics of Station Square have grown into a very strong, a very strong space, and I don’t think it should be taken away.
Jim: Danielle Murphy, who regularly travels to Portrush from Antrim with her family, chimes in with Alan’s recognition of the friendliness of the skateboarding community at Station Square and its establishment as a skating location.
Danielle: Everybody’s welcoming. Everybody wants to help out. They’re the best community. This is Station Square. This is where we skate. This is where everybody skates. People come from everywhere to skate here.
Jim: I spoke with local skaters Jesse and Wes, who reflected on the development of Station Square into a recognised skate spot, especially with the DIY addition of ramps and rails.
But Jesse and Wes were clear that they wanted to see a purpose-built skate park in Portrush. Station Square survives as a semi formal skate space under a temporary Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, from the Council. The temporary nature of the agreement, and the recent history of ramps being confiscated from Station Square, leave the skaters feeling insecure about the future of the space, as Jesse and Wes explain.
Jesse and Wes: This is only a temporary skate spot, and it’s too small. We want the real deal, and this is just a stepping stone. This is paid for entirely by skaters. Still not taken seriously enough for them to say a need for a purpose-built space for us. This’ll be the second Olympic summer with skateboarding in it, and we’re still nowhere forward, if you know what I mean. The last few years, the perspective of, like, people in the area has just changed to pro skateboarding.
Jim: Why?
Jesse and Wes: I would say because of the amount of kids that have taken it up. They can see that it’s not just it’s not just young adults like yourselves. I mean with this space that we have right now that’s only set up on under a endless council meetings and MOU, a memorandum of understanding.
Temporary arrangement for now. Yeah, so it’s not so even though it’s off the skaters and initiative the council are still setting limits, and you so having a proper dedicated space would free skaters from that.
They already said if, if something, like, a wee event happens in Portrush, they have the right to just remove all of this, so like, for how many days there’ll be nowhere to skate as such.
But at the same time, they have to put it back, or else there’ll be an uproar again. So, that’s the only catch that we have, or they have, yeah.
Jim: When the ramps were taken away from Station Square by the council a few summers ago, the community came together to get them back, highlighting the impressive support skateboarding now enjoys across Portrush.
Jesse and Wes: Yeah, I’d say the first time they were confiscated and towards the end of the summer of 2022, the public’s uproar and everything on social media was probably the best thing that could have happened for us because it finally got probably the entire public of Portrush and surrounding areas on our side for the first time I’ve ever seen that.
But it shows everyone cares. This committee cares about it. It’s not just a select few.
Jim: Lindsay Howard is at Station Square with her son. She echoes Wes and Jesse and nails the problem concisely. Why doesn’t Portrush have a skate park when it’s such a skateboardy town?
Lyndsey: I mean this is good enough for people but it’s just not big enough. Because come the summertime this is a Portrush is so busy now that there’s just not enough room for everybody.
I think they’d really benefit from a proper skate park. I just don’t understand why the likes of Ballymena and the like get one and we don’t.
Jim: They list the places, Portafogie and Newtownards.
Lyndsey: Considering, it’s such a surfy skateboardy town to begin with and it always has been.
Jim: Not everybody is a fan of skateboarders’ presence on the square. A worker at a nearby shop feels that Station Square is the wrong place for the skaters. But even they were at pains not to be understood as anti-skater per se.
Shop worker: I think it’s great for the kids to be out and about getting active and everything. I’m all for them having a skate park but I just don’t think Station Square is the best place for it. I think it’s too small for them. They don’t have a good run up because we’ve had kids like literally skating from the front door right up into the area there as a business here.
It causes us quite a few health and safety issues I think it’s brilliant some of the stuff they do down there is like super cool that area I think it’s just too small for them and they need a big wide area they can put big ramps up and stuff and and just do their thing but I just think it’s just not the right place.
Jim: A key plank of the current campaigning around the skateboard issue in Portrush is Causeway Association of Urban Sports, or CAUS for short. They’ve been lobbying the local council for fifteen years. CAUS have been a vital research partner in the CIP research, and the point of our research intervention has been to support their activity.
So the project works alongside CAUS, but is also able to go beyond the established campaign tactics of lobbying and publicity, to try to contribute something new. As a result of that fresh approach, Rose from CAUS suggests that there is a new recognition that the specific dynamic Portrush has as a seaside town undergoing gentrification has had significant impacts on the campaign to get a skate park here.
Rose: So I think tourism as a generator of income and probably wealth but also raising our profile on the wider world stage has become a bit like a runaway horse. I mean, it’s interesting that anywhere you go, people talk up tourism as the be all and end all, and yet tourism in itself quite often provides low paid jobs.
I mean, in terms of Port Ballantrae, for example, we’ve known for a long time that if you only focus on second holdings and, you lose your shops, you lose your schools, and yet we’re still very wedded to thinking the tourism and large events are the answer. I suppose because of the troubles, we’re not as far ahead as other places in terms of things like, how we view ourselves.
If you think of it really pragmatically, here you have in your doorstep, a sport that’s going to the Olympics, a sport that has a, enjoys a worldwide platform, a sport that runs alongside another sport you’re actually invested in, surfing. In one sense I do think there’s been a huge failure on the part of sports development to grasp at that. Where now when you look at it, and it’s gone on for so long, there are other skate parks now out there.
So, is this something then that’s particular to this borough, to this town? It’s a campaign that’s gone on for so long. It always meets success in the chamber. It’s not included locally in a strategy because I think when it starts to get weighed up against other things like tourism and that, it quickly falls down the agenda again.
And that’s what I say when I go back about the antagonism, because the meetings are not antagonistic. The antagonism has come through, it’s more like frustration of almost like two different messages and never, like no understanding that you can have the best of both worlds.
So I think it’s just been a clash of cultures, on the one hand, us believing that if you lobby long enough, something might happen, meeting a monolith that’s not remotely interested in developing that, even to their own detriment, because it has actually adversely affected the reputation of the council.
Jim: So while councils in other boroughs across Northern Ireland have built a raft of skateparks over the last decade, Portrush, the capital of skateboarding in the North of Ireland, still doesn’t have one. And an underpinning reason for that is the differing visions of the best use of space in the town.
Even though the provision of a skate park in Portrush has been voted for unanimously in the council chamber as recently as October 2023, this has not subsequently led to the inclusion of skateboarding in their published development strategies. As I mentioned earlier, the council’s stated priority, as described at length in various strategy documents, remains to divest valuable land assets, especially in seaside towns like Portrush.
Skateboarders reimagining of existing public space, like Station Square, and demands for dedicated facilities, in the form of a purpose-built skate park, clash with that stated priority.
I’ve known Slaine Brown for more than twenty years by now, from our shared involvement in the alternative cultural scene of the North Coast.
In addition to skateboarding and music, another of Slaine’s creative passions is videography. He has amassed an impressive collection of skateboarding video footage over the years. Much of it was in outdated formats, Super VHS and Mini DV, but working at the School of Communication and Media at Ulster University came in handy.
We’re lucky to have some excellent technicians and access to exactly the machines that could digitize these obsolete video formats.
For more than two hundred hours of video material, Slaine got to work creating short reels of historical skateboard footage in iconic skate spots in Portrush. Connecting this heritage of Portrush skateboarding with the contemporary scene, we organised a screening of the reels for the new generation of skaters, hosted at The Playhouse, an independent cinema in the town.
Hearing the skaters’ reflections on this classic footage was fantastic, but we took this creativity further. by inviting the contemporary skateboarders to revisit the same skate spots featured in the videos and to reimagine the skateboarding creativity that has marked those places. Woah!
Skaters: Onto sandpaper. Yo is that still there?
Yo, is that still there?
No this is gone now so this is I used to haul this every day.
Pure nostalgia. So good.
Like even the skating is so different back then to now, like.
Oh nice!
Jim: Of course, because of changes to the urban fabric, many of those spots have been rendered unskateable now.
But, on the flip side, if you’ll forgive the pun, new spots for skateboarding sometimes emerge from this redevelopment too, with Station Square being a prime example. The street level experience of skateboarding is notably effective in opening a fresh perspective on the issues around redevelopment of public space.
The creative practice of skateboarders, both in terms of reimagining public space and in capturing that creativity on video, gets at that critique from a unique vantage point. This project simply wouldn’t have been possible without Slaine’s extensive work to sift through the archived material and shoot new footage to put the old images in dialogue with the present-day skateboarding scene.
Slaine reflects on the changing context and changed attitudes to skateboarding since he started skating in Portrush in 1995. He talks about the ramps, the increased confidence in his work and joy at seeing the reaction from the community.
Slaine: I think it was about two years ago, ramps started turning up at Station Square and I was amazed that they stayed.
They stayed for the whole summer; it was brilliant. Eventually the council took all the ramps and there was a big outcry by all the locals. I was amazed watching the outcry online because growing up here as a teenager skating, I couldn’t believe that parents and whoever was suddenly behind the skaters and then it hit me that, oh my god, I’m one of the parents.
You know, I’m forty-five now, and oh right, they’re all the people we grew up with that have been seeing us skate Portrush all these years. They’re now the people that have kicked up a fuss against the council. So getting into this research project, it was suddenly for years of me making videos and thinking where do I go next.
But yeah, it’s been great to suddenly have a lot more confidence in what I’ve been doing since I was a kid, which is playing with video cameras. I’ve been messing with videos since way before I even started skateboarding. So, yeah, it’s brilliant that it’s always been there, and it’s just reopened it all for me and got me back to it again.
In all of this community stuff we’ve been doing with the skaters I’ve noticed that the younger ones are fully into it they all want to know they want to learn how to build ramps yeah and it’s just great seeing the reaction in the group chat whenever you’re like well we’re doing this we’re doing that then you see how many people are coming down it’s good to know that we’re all here together.
Jim: A close relationship with CAUS has also been essential. Rose reflects on the Community Innovation Practitioner collaboration.
Rose: You’ve provided us with a lot of energy. You’ve provided us almost with a bit of validity in terms of, you’re coming from an academic perspective. And so that’s fresh for us.
And to look at even your insight in terms of the work that’s going on elsewhere, it gives us a bit of a context and also seeing what we’re doing fits in somewhere, in terms of a journey. And I think it’s good because when you’re bogged down in the middle of it, you can focus very much on what you maybe didn’t do or what they didn’t do.
And it becomes like that. Whereas I think actually there is a bigger picture here, and I think as well, the fact that you have taken the time to look through and get that overview has been, it’s just really important. I think I can say even morale, but also are we on the right track? I think is there better ways we could have done this, but also are other things at play, including for example, things like, gentrification.
So for you, I think it’d be interesting because of the academic slant for us, we embraced you coming along with your, because I think it gives us a validity. It also places us. You’ve told us about campaigns and things we didn’t even know were happening.
Jim: Our dialogue with our research partners put us on to a pathway to transformative impact in terms of upskilling and empowering the skateboarding community.
Our interventions aim to shift the whole terrain of contestation over a skate park in Portrush to recentre the skaters as legitimate users of public space. Practically, this took the form of producing films that analyse issues from the perspective of the skateboarder’s ground level experience, and an initiative to collectively refurbish the DIY ramps that mark Station Square as a place for skateboarding.
Rose reflects on some of the ways that the CIP research has started to shift the wider thinking around the campaign. Both in terms of informing what calls do, and in the ability of the CIP project to take a different tack.
Rose: So did we end up in a particular situation because it was a seaside town, because there were other issues at play?
And, and I think, I think that’s when you’re talking about the strategic point of view, it’s interesting to see that if you’re going to be in an area like this and can’t conduct a campaign like this, Then the rules maybe are different and that’s not a perspective I think that we particularly had before.
That’s what’s been missing, is the respect for the do-it-yourself side of it. I think though there is a clash that happens. On the one hand you love the outsider part of it, but on the other hand at some point does somebody just want to go in and skate on a nice big park. And that unfortunately means the self-help ethos at some point.
Well, either somebody builds one privately, and you pay to use it, or you lobby your council who are the perceived provider of leisure. So it’s a funny one. On the one hand, I think the outsider side of it really develops people. On the other hand, I wonder how much more they would develop.
If they had their own space free of a lot of those issues. But then it’s what sits behind that that we can, platform or we can tap into is all that other energy. Because that’s why I was saying the other times, I’ve spoken to you like the skate community is so vague and it’s got so many different parts, causes only like a tiny part of that.
Jim: Slaine reflects on the different impacts this interventionist approach to research has had so far.
Slaine: To put the videos together and to see the reaction, like they don’t want to sound cheesy and say like a legacy or the heritage or something like that, but it’s as if like the younger ones are, realising that they’re skating Portrush because people always skated it before them.
Yeah, it’s been brilliant to have this type of thing whenever I reached my forties where suddenly it was like another whole scene kicking off again. Which inspired me again. Yeah, going down there and just seeing the camaraderie of everybody and seeing the reactions that they had to us going to San Diego and seeing Tony Hawk holding up a sticker that says…
Tony Hawk: Get PortRush a skate park let’s go!
Slaine: I think that was just enough to get everybody to believe in the fact that we could actually get a park at last.
And I think as well it just completely shocked the council to go oh those little skateboarders from Portrush. They’ve got organised and done something big that’s been on the news, and they’ve gone like, they’ve taken the story worldwide.
News item: Now, Tony Hawk’s probably the most influential skateboarder in the world.
He helps build public skate parks for young people in the U.S. So that they can practice the sport in a safe space legally. But he’s turned his attention to Northern Ireland and is now supporting calls for a skate park in Portrush. Our northeast reporter, Maria McCann, has more…
Skaters have been trying to get an urban sports park here in Portrush since the ‘90’s days.
I started skateboarding in ‘95, right here in Portrush at the ampey in Station Square.
Slaine: So yeah, finally for this whole climb day thing to have kicked off big style and. for us all to be congregating there so much and to be supplying ramps not just for the skaters but for like there’s kids there that are turning up on skiers that are just up on holiday for the weekend the parents get to sit around and watch and it’s like it’s free and it’s for them and it’s being supplied by us there’s a lot of people that i grew up skating with that were not only my peers but people that i looked up to, and they’ve, been amazed at what we’ve done.
It’s not over yet, cause, we’ve still gotta get the park built and there’s more to come. And then for that to see young ones getting excited about it and stuff, it’s brilliant. But it wasn’t just that, it was also, I think it was a culmination of things. It was like CAUS the Charity were pushing things for ages.
A Skater, Cullen Green. He was the one that started the Get Portrush a skate park hashtag thing. It’s hard to explain, but it’s just the fact that, yeah, everybody seems to have come from, a few different angles at the same time and we’ve all met up in the middle and I think, yeah, the council are probably sitting a bit dumbfounded going like, who’s in charge here?
Like, which one do we turn to because they’re surrounded now. Yeah, definitely gave me a lot of self-respect and I think it’s great to see how much respect skateboarding’s got in Portrush.
Jim: Harry Meadley has been engaged in research interventions with skateboarders in his work at Leeds Beckett University.
His Civic Skateboarding project attempts to make public spaces safer and more inclusive, especially for female and marginalised gender members of the skateboarding community. He talked to me about the linkage between research and change making, while highlighting similar issues in the skateboarders’ experiences of using public space.
Harry: In terms of the skateboard community, at least in Leeds, but I think this is true all over the place is, really a historic, antagonism, historic antagonism between police, council, policy makers, private landowners, developers, whatever. The main issue people have with skateboarding is maybe the younger teenage, early twenties generation occupying public, private spaces, but maybe also missing great opportunities to embrace that community, embrace that activity.
Jim: Harry, like Rose at CAUS, also notes the kudos that the academic label provides.
Harry: And so the research is there to enable change, and to make quite specific interventions, also informed by the research. So the research allows you to make the intervention, but then through the research you identify exactly what changes need to be made as well.
I guess my take would be what’s the point of research unless it leads to some sort of change, whether that’s better knowledge, better understanding or actually improving things. You need the data, you need the argument, a well-constructed argument. and an informed argument if you want to make those sorts of changes.
Especially for people who don’t understand it, if you want to convince people you have to share knowledge with them. And if it sounds academic, people in local councils, local politics, believe in that stuff.
Jim: Jesse and Wes, two of the skateboarders in Portrush, are with Harry on this. Especially in terms of the practical benefits of our ramp refurbishment initiative at Station Square.
The harsh weather that Portrush experiences jutting out as it does into the North Atlantic Ocean means the plywood surfaces on the skaters DIY made ramps become degraded. The initiative to refurbish them was an opportunity to bring the skateboarding community together and empower them to effect change collectively, while communicating a clear message of self-respect as well as respect for the space at Station Square.
Jesse and Wes: Yeah, I think this whole research project has actually given us, given us a responsibility to actually do this.
It’s put us on the map a lot more. It’s put Portrush as a skating destination on the map a lot more. I suppose it’s helped to take us more seriously.
As users of public space, I suppose you’re making us as the skateboarders, take this more seriously. It’s like, if you want a skate park, you gotta show that you’s can look after it, you’s can build things, show the council what we actually want. You know, we’re doing that, we’ve done that.
Cause there’s only so much that we can do with our own community. Like, they’ll look at all these research papers and all these headlines and only then will they go, oh aye, that’s a good idea. So, this is only helping us.
Without things like that we’re just other members of the community asking, asking for something like everyone else is. Without actual concreting evidence and research put into it, and that’s all we are. And we’re obviously not taken serious with just that.
Jim: The do-it-yourself energy of the skateboarders has been really important, and our research interventions have been able to tap into that in interesting ways. Beyond improving the look of the ramps and the skateboarding experience, the community were able to get together, share skills, And express pride in their creative community.
Jesse and Wes: That ramp looked quite pristine.
It was mainly because the council were complaining about the actual look of them. But they weren’t prepared to actually hand us any money to do anything.
Jim: We chatted with people at Station Square after the ramps had been refurbished to get their opinion. Daniela Morelli Kerr appreciated the ramp refurbishment initiative.
Daniella: I think the maintenance of the ramps, for sure. Some of that money could at least go towards that. I know that they’ve been recently refurbished, which is great, but I don’t believe, was that council?
Jim: No it was not council.
Daniella: It was not the council, so why are they not contributing towards that? Um, they should be, for sure.
I’m not an expert on ramps, but to me they look one hundred percent better. And the granite in the middle, obviously, yes, looks class. Did a great job, whoever’s responsible, yeah, I think it does enhance the look of the station square. I probably did need done, to be honest, yeah.
Jim: While continuing to highlight the need for a proper skate park, Fred agrees that the ramp refurbishment has helped the durability and appearance of the ramps, helping stave off council complaints that the ramps are unsightly.
Fred: Well, it just gives it a bit of longevity, doesn’t it? Because obviously They’re all wooden rumps. We’re in Northern Ireland. Ideally, the best solution would be an indoor skate park, let’s face it. We can’t predict our weather. So, the benefit of refurbing it is obviously making it last another year at least.
And get everyone out and get the use of it. It certainly puts a stamp on the place. I think one of the last council meetings there was, concern from the council over the look of the place and how everything looked different. Some things clearly looked, home built rather than purpose built from, the likes of SB ramps and that, whereas now tidying it all up, getting that uniformity.
Making it slick and clean. It’s one less thing, I guess, that the council can come at the community and say, right, it’s an eyesore. Actually, everything looks aesthetically pleasing to the eye. So it matches. That box, everything’s safe, it’s all well-built. So it ticks that box as well. So yeah, I think it just puts a stump on it that actually, it’s not cowboys just here, it’s people that actually care.
Jim: So this intervention was effective in several regards. Addressing an immediate need on the part of the skaters, alleviating a point of tension with the local council, putting a stamp on Station Square as a place for skateboarding, bringing the skateboarding community together to empower them to take collective action in their space, while pointing the way to a proper purpose built skatepark.
It also helped to address scepticism on the part of some online commenters about the value of the research for local skateboarders. Social media lit up when news of this research project was announced, but not all of the responses were supportive.
One comment read, ‘That’s cool and all, but 58k would build a skatepark. Hope this won’t just be money in the back of some big university muggles, with maybe a grand spent making a bleep. Low budget thirty-minute video about skateboarding.’
I let Jesse and Wes take the bat on this one.
Jesse and Wes: I mean, obviously that 58k can all go towards a, a skate park. That’s, that’s what a lot of people on Facebook and everywhere else seem to think.
It is not enough money, and people don’t realize that it’s not enough money. Yeah, for a start, but then that’s, that’s not what the money is granted for in the first place, that. could help it, but that’s not, that’s not what the money has been granted for. The money’s been granted for a research project to prove the need for it to then be granted more.
Jim: Exactly so. But those critical online comments were a useful reminder about the positionality of the research. It was important to clearly situate the project as a useful intervention from the outset, one that would be contributing to the skateboard community’s culture and ongoing campaigning. Being close to home and intimately engaged with my local context and community has been a huge opportunity for this research.
Not least as a foundation for the research relationships that underpinned the whole project. But there’s also been a sense of being too close to home, which has brought some unexpected challenges. Ulster University’s Corian campus and Causeway Coast and Glensborough Council have a lot of mutually beneficial interactions.
But there are also times when interests can conflict, as might be expected. Advocating for transformative impact that involves challenging the local council’s strategies and conduct and giving voice to my research partners while representing their interests with integrity has at times been made difficult.
But maybe this is par for the course when research is intended to make an intervention on your own doorstep. That certainly seems to have been the experience of cause as they face their own challenges in trying to effect change in their local context.
Rose: I think for your perspective it is uncomfortably close to home.
People used to say to us all the time, aren’t you afraid that this will adversely affect your employment, and yeah, have you started to think about it? But equally I think we’re just fulfilling a democratic function. You’re fulfilling an academic function. The university has always I think especially, and I can just speak from Coleraine locals perhaps in particular, almost felt a place where you went to work with the cleaners, the security guard, that perhaps, especially in the past, it sat as a place alone.
And I think doing work like this connects it to the community. I know they’ve done a lot of work as well in engagement to get more students to come locally and I know that it’s like a change in dialogue with the university and the town all the time. But for me, I think it’s a win-win for the university to get the bigger picture because the surfing elements, the skating elements, Even the fact the way the area is changing, I mean, it all needs to be, put under some academic scrutiny of some sort.
Jim: Rose’s resilience is inspiring, and she makes a really good point. Ulster University’s current strategy, People, Place and Partnership, shares the same motivations as our research intervention. The strategy foregrounds collaboration, enhancing potential, inclusion and integrity. These terms could all be readily mapped onto our work alongside the Portrush skateboarding community.
And with Ulster University’s Coleraine campus being so close to Portrush, there is a real opportunity to see those ideals put in practice within the university’s local community. There are promising signs that perspectives are beginning to be transformed, and our research interventions are helping to effect that change.
Daniela Morelli Kerr reflected on her own changed perspective on skateboarding.
Daniella: I don’t really know. I think it was the noise, and I suppose they had a bad rep because, uh, just always there and always making noise and always groaning about not having a skateboard. So, but again, like, I was naive to it and didn’t really understand what it was all about until, obviously, that’s changed now.
Now I’ve got to know the people behind the local scene, and as I say, he’s part of that scene now. My attitude towards it’s changed, like, 360, so I’m all in favour of Station Square. Obviously, it would be better somewhere else. It’s purpose built.
Jim: Rose explains about the unforeseen transformations on the CAUS campaign in terms of a new framing for the wider issues, the opportunity to expand the strategy around the Get Portrush a Skatepark campaign, and the valorising impact on the skateboarding community.
Rose: I actually think it’s had really good impact. The energy in the skating community had really gone down as well. So I think what’s been interesting about this project is On the one hand, for us as a campaign group, it’s maybe given us a bit of a new language and some perspective and definitely thoughts about learning more from other areas that could help us with our strategic direction.
But I also think on the ground, it’s really energised the skaters as well. Because there’s so many different strands of the skate community. So there’s like the really young skaters that are coming through, for example, the skate school and their parents. And so they’re seeing Station Square as somewhere they can practice.
There’s the work of Slaine’s doing in his videos, not only with the old videos that have been curated and maybe looked at differently and have been given a new, almost, narrative. But then he’s making new videos. And then, obviously as well, we have managed to get the acceptability of Station Square, which happens through the council, in a sense.
But also the fact that you’ve now galvanised it on people to be making new ramps, parents getting involved. So I think actually there’s been a lot that’s come out of this. But it’s definitely getting a sense that when you butt out up against something, you definitely have to provide some ingenuity. There’s been a huge energy.
Jim: This project has relied on building meaningful research relationships, especially with Slaine Brown as a key collaborator and with Causeway Association of Urban Sports as a campaigning partner, but also with the wider skateboarding community and with local businesses who’ve been keen to show support to the skaters, the ultimate goal is still to get Portrush a skate park, and that hasn’t been achieved yet.
It remains to be seen whether this research project and our various interventions will help towards that. But as our research collaborators have told us, we’ve at least helped to equip the local skaters to continue that fight more effectively. The challenges of being too close to home are more than outweighed by the opportunity.
And by the satisfaction of making change in your own community, researchers can bring new energy to existing campaigns. But where that energy is directed is the essential question. I think the key lesson for anyone else thinking of taking a similar approach is to start with the deep research relationships and continue to be guided by your research partners in the research co-design, in its co delivery, in the interventions and in how those impacts are communicated and co-evaluated.
Katy: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Creative Communities Podcast.
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Join us for the next episode when we’ll be in Glasgow with Gaston, whose design led approach to knowledge exchange is testing a user-friendly framework. for building innovative research partnerships in the arts and humanities.
Outro clip: We all firmly believe in the importance of the arts and humanities and culture and creativity.
It’s about working in partnership. How can we connect or share good practice and share understanding?
Outro clip: It’s about groups or individuals coming together and sharing what they have to try and create something better than the individual parts.
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