Save Southbank

Official petition text:
Since the early seventies ‘the Undercroft’ (the sheltered area beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s Southbank) has served as the home of the skateboarding community in the UK. It’s an open public-space that has brought together thousands of young people, from various backgrounds, over the last 35 years to form a harmonious and positive community. This type of positive and ‘unorganised’ activity for young people is very rarely seen elsewhere in the UK today… However the area is now being rapidly redeveloped and the future of ‘the Undercroft’ is uncertain. Already a large part has been partitioned off behind large wooden hoardings. Please join us in petitioning the government to guarantee that the site is: (A) returned to its previous state (allowing the general public and skateboarders open access to the full area), and (B) officially protected and preserved for future generations of the skateboard community to use.




From Jeremy Abbott, London, UK.

The Save Southbank campaign has all been initiated by two major legends on the UK skate scene: Toby Shuall (does Suburban Bliss clothing label) and Winstan Whitter (now a video director who produced the Rolling Through The Decades documentary). They've constantly been campaigning over the years to set up a dialogue between the skaters and the Southbank Centre, the organistation which is an arts charity that owns the Southbank complex of venues. They essentially want to make it official that the covered undercroft down by the Thames under the QEH is going to be preserved for use by skateboarders and bmx'ers for as long as the demand is there. They've regularly gone along to local council meetings and discussion groups to try and voice their opinions and have generally always been shutdown. The pair have also both been attempting to set up an official dialogue with the directors behind the Southbank Centre which dictate the future of the area; this has also in the past generally been rebuked. Over the last year since the Royal Festival Hall re-opened following extensive refurbishment there have been chain restaurants popping up along the riverfront. This has immediately raised concerns about the future of the area the skaters use and how long the Southbank organisation could resist taking the opportunity to develop the undercroft for further commercial use. A couple of years ago a third of the space was closed off for storage behind hoardings and the undercroft has still yet to be restored to it's original size. It was all looking very bleak, so i-D decided to do a story on the skaters down there with photographer Tyrone LeBon while it still existed.

Over the years the undercroft has been essential to elevating UK skateboarding. Everyone knows that. There's a powerful almost primal spirit saturated in that concrete which has birthed and grown many a UK skate legend as well as welcomed visiting stars from around the world and includes a role call of: Curtis McCann, Ben Jobe, Morbid, Mark Boyce, Shane O'Brien, Jason Maldini, Mike Manzoori, Femi Bukunola and Aaron Bleasdale. New school UK pros Blueprint’s Neil Smith and Nick Jensen can be spotted down there now alongside Joey Pressey (aka Joey Crack) with recent visits from Stateside teams including the Spike Jonze co-owned Girl skate squadron. Winstan s highlighted snapshots include: “Off the little banks we used to put a jump ramp, and we'd fly out over a cone on top of the bank and I remember seeing my friend Harvey doing a 360 nose grab ollie out of it, and he was a little munchkin, it was amazing. And Lex used to rip it up and use the loading bay, which was our favourite place, and he used to get six-foot ollie grabs and ollie melancholies out of it before anyone really used to have that style going on. Then there were the bank to wall days, which were some of the best sessions and I remember seeing Natas doing a frontside rock n roll slide on it, which was amazing. Morbid doing frontside wall rides and always skating at 100mph. Then watching Curtis (McCann) was literally one of the best things I ever saw.”

During the 90s, when skateboarding fully gained the nuisance label, and global anti-skateboarding measures were readily factored into municipal areas including raging security guards and bolts and plugs that prevent skaters riding ledges and rails to curtail building damage and accident and insurance issues. Relationships also appeared to sour between then management at the Southbank Centre and the skateboarders, with the lights being switched off throughout the evening, gravel being scattered to hinder riding through the undercroft and eventually imposing bars being placed within the area to completely attempt to prevent skating the banks once and for all. Those bars eventually became something to conquer in more ways than one initially pushing skaters to hammer ollies over the bars, but they went one stage further as Toby explains: “That was when we were eventually trying to cut them off with hacksaws. Then we figured out if there were enough of you there’d be whole crews of people shaking the barriers off together and throwing them in the river and they’d be welded back on the next day!”

With the help of Winstan and Toby, we covered the Southbank skaters during the summer for i-D and during the same period the pair re-activated their own campaign which culminated in a new 20 minutes documentary Save Southbank which comprehensively outlines their many arguments for maintaining the space for skateboarding. It included commentary from skaters, locals, tourists and eminent architects. The film premiered to a sold out audience of skaters who showed solidarity for the cause at the Prince Charles Cinema in central London. Toby introduced the film with a statement from the Southbank organisation re-iterating their intentions from two years ago which claim they have no plans to develop the site for the foreseeable future. Which is great, however there still needs to be an active intervention from the Southbank organisation to invest money in maintenance and just to embrace it as much as they do any of the other arts performances which skating and bmx-ing deserved to sit alongside, going on in any one of their other venues. The feature and film has raised a lot of media interest throughout London and the country, the Evening Standard, Londonpaper and Time Out all ran features on the campaign. Most importantly, there is a UK government petition which needs to be signed by all, when an adequate number of people have signed it (3000), then it needs to be taken into serious consideration by the government. It's at 2,818, so not far to go. SAVE SOUTHBANK!!!!!!!

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