LEEDS SKATE GALS AND PALS
Sport
LEEDS SKATE GALS AND PALS
In continuation of our series on sport, we hit the parks, pipes and rails of Leeds with Leeds Skate Gals and Pals. Leeds based, but international in outlook, this collective aims to empower women, girls and non-binary people to pick up a board and skate. The group, set up by Maddie and Marie recently took their first trip to Barcelona, we caught up with the two of them when they touched back on British soil.
Words:
Luc Hinson
Imagery:
Amy Brown
BB: Why did you set up Leeds Skate Gals n Pals?
Maddie: When we started, it was just a small crew – me, Marie and a couple of mates. We didn’t really go further than that until we both attended a skate night put on by the University of Leeds skate society. When we were there we noticed there were quite a lot of girls, so we quickly made a facebook group there and then and went around asking girls for their names and added them to the group. Initially, we set it up to kind of network and organise when and where we were going to skate.
Marie: We used it to create a network, yes there were girls who were already skating but we just wanted a way to find more girls. It’s not the same when you skate with boys, I think, when you want inspiration it’s important to find people that are like you.
BB: How did you all meet? Tell us a bit about the team?
Marie: Currently, the team is Maddie and Me. We met through some friends and I thought she was really really cool, and apparently she thought I was really cool..
Maddie: Yeah she came in with a skateboard and I was like “wow I haven’t seen a girl with a skateboard hardly ever in Leeds, I really want to be friends with this girl”. Thankfully she felt the same way and we decided to go pole dancing together, and then decided we wanted to try skateboarding and fell in love with that instead!
BB: Tell us a bit about Leeds, what’s the skateboarding scene like there?
Maddie: I’ve always felt really comfortable in Leeds to be honest, some of my male mates in Leeds had skated there already so I felt more comfortable. Everyone else I’ve met since then has been so welcoming and so loving. There’s a really good skate store in leeds called Welcome that has been so supportive of everything me and Marie have done. The girl’s scene in Leeds has been really friendly and involved, some of my best mates have come out of skating in leeds!
Marie: It’s not only skateboarding, there are some other shredding groups and roller skaters as well. We feel like we have a really strong community, all the groups are supporting each other. Some of the groups are now businesses as well! There are so many great skate parks around leeds as well, so I feel like we’re really lucky!
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We think it’s important to integrate everyone from any sort of ages, for the mums who want to bring their daughters to skate in safe spaces.
BB: Who’s welcome in Leeds Skate Gals and Pals?
Marie: anyone who doesn’t identify as male, you may be non-binary, you may be a girl, a woman, whatever we just want an inclusive kind of space for everyone that felt that they needed a non-male touch…
Maddie: …Not hyper masculine. Both me and Marie, we do skate with boys, but sometimes the energy is very different. Especially If you’re just starting out on something and you’re not a very aggressive skateboarder or new to a park. We just wanted to create a space that was nurturing and relaxed and would enable people that wanted to skateboard but maybe would have felt a bit uncomfortable in traditional, more masculine spheres to feel safe. Also, so people of all ages and levels could connect and enjoy skateboarding without feeling any sort of apprehension or feeling intimidated.
Marie: We think it’s important to integrate everyone from any sort of ages, for the mums who want to bring their daughters to skate in safe spaces. Even some mums have picked up skateboarding through this themselves.
Maddie: Yeah the gnarly mums out there!
Marie: Yeah really gnarly mums out there. At the moment, people need a safe space and need to identify with other people if they want to thrive in what they are doing. We want everyone to feel welcome, but we’re also supported by a lot of male skaters, so we want to say thanks to them too!
BB: What do you think is the biggest barrier to integration in Britain today?
Marie: We think its stereotypes. Simply because of when people don’t want to get out of their comfort zones, where they don’t get to challenge the stereotypes that they hold. Where people look at you like you’re an outsider without giving you the chance to break that stereotype.
Maddie: On the flip side, There’s been times when I was intimidated at skateparks, and it’s not because of people not being friendly, but because I held a stereotype about the people who were there. In any sort of circle you’re going to run into people that aren’t very nice or do make you feel small. A lot of the time it’s stereotypes that skaters and non-skaters hold in their head about what the person is like. I mean maybe 8 or 9 times out of 10 people are friendly and nice, but it comes from confidence i guess.
Marie: I also feel that when you’re a girl skateboarding you’ve always got to prove something. People look at you not like oh my god what skills can she do, they look at you like oh my god can she even skate? You wouldn’t want to have to prove anything, it can be a big barrier to integration, because if you feel underestimated why should you even try?
Maddie: A lot of it is about visibility. With a lot of skateboarding media, a lot of it is focused on male skaters. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be visible, but a lot less girls are featured in mainstream skateboarding media. Yeah on social media you can see loads of videos of girls skateboarding, but in skateparks, and publications girls are so much less visible.
It’s changed recently, since I started skating leeds about 2 years ago i’ve noticed so many more girls around. It’s less of an anomaly to go up as a girl, but in other parks I may be the only girl and that can not only be intimidating, but you could be prey to a weird guy. Of course there are weird guys everywhere, in nightclubs and on the street but occasionally i’ve felt a bit nervous being the only girl up there, and sometimes you will get unwanted attention. So I think for girls seeing other girls up there it can make you more confident.
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On social media, you can see loads of videos of girls skateboarding, but in skateparks, and publications girls are so much less visible.
BB: What do you hope to achieve through Leeds Skate Gals n Pals?
Marie: We hope to empower women and non-binary people. We hope to Give them a voice and a safe space for everyone that needs to be comfortable and wants to try a new thing!
Maddie: We’re really hoping to support the Leeds skateboarding community, especially focusing on women and non-binary people. From the outset of this group it’s been about wanting to create a network where people can love and enjoy skateboarding as much as Marie and I do. In more recent months we’ve been looking beyond just Leeds, We just took a trip to barcelona with a group of girls from around the world. Our main focus is Leeds but as this grows it’s about supporting and empowering women in the skateboarding world, and creating networks with women from different areas so we can all shred and benefit.
BB: Other than skating what does the collective get up to?
Marie: over the last few months the group has really been blossoming. We have a lot of creative ideas that we want to turn into reality. We did the trip of course, we’ve done some merchandising, some waxing, some cooking – we made some tote bags recently. It’s just good to have this space to express yourself and also use the funds available to us to empower the leeds skateboarding community.
Maddie: Just to clarify when we talk about waxing we make our own vegan, glittery, colourful skateboarding wax. It’s not any sort of hair and beauty stuff! We’re just enjoying what we do with group, letting it grow and continuing to support the Leeds skateboarding scene.
BB: Who were your sporting idols growing up?
Marie: Funnily enough i didn’t have any growing up… but even thinking about it, what’s crazy is even if I had one I don’t think it was a woman. Now I’m skateboarding that’s when I’ve started to look to women as role models in the skateboarding scene. I really appreciate these women in skateboarding – they make me think “oh if they can do that I can do that!”
Maddie: When I was growing up I wasn’t really into any sports other than horse riding, so I definitely idolised some horse riders growing up. Not enough to be able to recall any of them to you now though… More recently i’m more excited to see female skaters! I definitely watch more female skaters than male. That’s the great thing about Instagram, that you can get to know and follow loads of people who aren’t necessarily signed or sponsored. I really look up to Marie, Marie inspires me
Marie: We inspire each other, on a daily basis!
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For me, Britishness is multiculturalism, people coming from everywhere and sharing and making the country beautiful.
BB: What does Britishness mean to you in the 21st Century?
Marie: Personally, I was born in france and I’d lived in France until I was 18. For me, Britishness is multiculturalism, people coming from everywhere and sharing and making the country beautiful and multicultural.
Maddie: I think I can sometimes feel like Britishness is potentially problematic in certain ways, and I feel a lot of people’s views of what it means to be british are problematic. But as Marie says, it’s all the people that have contributed to Britain that make it wonderful, And I hope that we can continue to remember who it was that made Britain great and embrace people regardless of their background.
Marie: I think one important way to help create a common cultural identity in the country, is by being more inclusive of every single person that’s in the country. With tolerance and acceptance, Britain can be the real Britain it is – a melting pot of amazing colours from a lot of beautiful countries.
Maddie: I do think though that a lot of people forget about what Britain’s colonial roots mean for today. For Britain to have a positive future we need to remember where we came from, and to stop thinking that the White British males are what made Britain great.
BB: What traditional connotations do you think are associated with skateboarding? And how can they be overcome?
Maddie: I think traditionally skateboarding has been seen as quite aggressive, slightly countercultural and very masculine. I think a lot of this can be used positively, although it is seen as masculine it does enable a certain self-expression. But often how girls are socialised in society is to not take risks and be gentle. So to overcome this, it’s important to showcase different styles of skateboarding. I don’t think skateboarding should lose its counter cultural identity though, it’s important to challenge society!
Marie: I think it’s really important today for the skateboarding community to open itself up and be more welcoming of newcomers: people from all backgrounds, genders. We need to keep the scene accessible for all.
BB: Tell us about your recent trip to Barcelona
Marie: Barcelona was, at the beginning, not very well organised because… we just wanted to go on holiday! But we’ve been going on about this trip for so long so we thought let’s get some people involved. More people got involved, we made a poster, even more people got involved! In the end we went to Barcelona for five days with 22 girls, and it was a dream!
There was a lot to organise, I think our lack of experience showed, but we learnt so much! We were able to gather girls from the US, Switzerland and all over the UK thanks to Instagram and social media! It was great we were really able to build a connection with the girls, without even knowing them. Arriving in Barcelona we all just clicked and it was so nice turning up to skate in that size of a group, just taking over the space.
Maddie: So I just want to say that Marie’s organisational skills are phenomenal. The trip would not have happened without her. It was so sick, we kind of knew a few of the people maybe 2 or 3 of the girls before we went. It was an amazing chance to network with other girls who are passionate about skateboarding. It was really powerful to be the largest group at a skatepark, because normally in the UK when you go and skate as a girl you’ll normally be in the minority. A guy even came up and asked to take a picture of all of us as he was so surprised that there were so many more girls in the park than boys It’s really interesting that we hadn’t done an event before, so for this to be our first and to go so well was great! It enabled us to get to know girls who are part of other collectives, a great opportunity to meet girls from other groups and continue to grow our network!
BB: So what else is in store for 2019… what do you hope to achieve?
Maddie: We’ve already started looking at the next location of our trip! We’re hoping to go to Berlin in April… so watch this space. Then later on in the year Marie and I are hoping to go volunteer in South Africa. We’ll be working with charities there, teaching women to skateboard and empowering them to do so alongside our Masters degrees. Carrying on with what we’re doing now and building on it, making more wax, spreading the network further and getting more women, girls and non-binary people into skateboarding in Leeds!
Marie: In 2019 we want to put on more events in Leeds: workshops and fundraisers to try and make the Leeds community even stronger! We hope we can get even more people involved with Leeds Skate gals and pals and deliver good vibes!
Maddie: Another goal is to support the reopened Leeds indoor skate park LS10. We hope to get more people into the park and continue supporting them because they’ve given so much to us!
I’d just like to take a moment to thank everyone who’s supported us, everyone who’s involved in Leeds Skate gals and pals, I love seeing all the vids and pics posted on the page, people asking questions and giving tips and seeing new faces in the park! It’s been incredible but we wouldn’t be anywhere if it wasn’t for the support we’ve had from women and girls and non-binary folk in Leeds!
Marie: I’d like to encourage as many people as possible to take up skateboarding. It’s been so, so beneficial to my mental health. It’s so good to know that you can always go beyond your capacity, and become more powerful and have more strength. Even if sometimes it’s challenging, I’ve never met so many people who are pushing me and supporting me to do more and keep going!
Peace
Instagram: @Leedsgalsnpals
Facebook: Leeds Skate Gals and Pals
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