Skate to Screen

Our Vision

We believe that by harnessing skateboarding culture, we can create a platform to teach young people technical, social, and employable life skills that they can take forward in their adult life. By engaging teenagers through their love for skateboarding we excite them about learning in a designated industry and sow the seed for them to think about that industry as a possible future. We are looking to light a spark for teenagers just as they hit the age of thinking “what do I do next”. We want to break the mold of traditional teaching environments and put on a selection of industry-specific courses and workshops using skateboarding at its core. It’s time to take the classroom to the skatepark and the streets and engage the future generations in locations that they relate to.

The workshop was run by a collective of Bristol-based academics, educators, filmmakers, and skateboarding enthusiasts. We’d had ideas about non-traditional forms of education that had been simmering for a while – and were finally given the time to be realized during the lockdown. Therefore, in late 2020, our respective skills and passions aligned to form the perfect recipe for successfully putting on our first skate film workshop.

Shextreme • Campus Skateparks • Get Your Bearings • Clockwise Film

The Story So Far…

Our first course took place in July 2021 in partnership with Vanguard exhibition’s summer outreach program. Skate to Screen was a free 3-day skateboard cinematography workshop for 14-18 years olds.

The course was free to allow it to be as inclusive as possible. During the program, participants were taken on a succession of workshops that looked at the history of film in skateboarding, camera training on professional cameras, practical workshops, documentary masterclasses, and practical filming tutorials. To solidify the learning, the attendees were challenged to create a 2-minute edit featuring a Vans Pro as the subject. The skills they developed were made as transferable as possible, rather than being solely skateboard relevant, with day two being on location & the streets running as separate production units as they would in the industry. The fun didn’t stop there as day 3 they jumped into the edit and premiered all of their films at the campus skatepark.

The Results:

Three days ago I literally couldn’t hold a camera properly, but now, you know, I’ve got the techniques
Grace, age 15

Skate to Screen positively increased teenage participants’ confidence and abilities in key employable skills for the future.

These future-proofing employable skills are outlined in Nesta’s The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030 report (2017).

80%

of participants found attending Skate to Screen helped them improve their judgment and decision-making skills.

90%

of participants found attending Skate to Screen helped them improve their ability to fluently share their ideas with a group.

100%

of participants are now more comfortable with actively interacting with the learning process, as opposed to passively taking in the information, as a result of attending Skate to Screen.

100%

of participants are now more confident in their individual ability to generate an idea for a future creative project that is really unique and original as a result of attending Skate to Screen.

I definitely learn better when I’m hands-on learning, doing practical things, working with people. I really enjoy all that kind of stuff.
Anis, age 15

The Films:

Team 1:

Team 2:

Team 3:

Team 4:

The Future

As demonstrated by the results above we truly believe
that the format we have created could just be the start of something special in our bid to inspire teenagers with skills in more than just filmmaking. In 2022 we aim to put on 2 more workshops.