Voices of Skateboarding
This summer, from June to mid-July, our project Skate Talks took place in several Russian regions, created jointly by the Hip Hop Library, the Skateboarding Federation of the Arkhangelsk Region, the Social Project “House on Wheels” of the Leningrad Region and several foreign organizations. Back in May, while planning the project, our team decided that we would shoot a documentary and cover the topic of skateboarding from the perspective of independent hip-hop. We made next post in the Hip Hop Library group:
«Skate and hip hop culture are connected by a solid foundation of street culture. In fact, extreme sports developed almost in parallel with hip hop culture and formed a strong community of fans of both at the same time. In skate culture, there are even skating styles that are suitable for listening to hip hop music (tricks in flat and at low speed with complex flips). On the other hand, breaking in hip hop in its sporty essence, style and mood is also close to skate and it is associated with, an alternative vision to real “streetness”. Moreover, some b-boys are also skaters, and in confirmation of these theses it is worth recalling the track KRS ONE, where extreme sports are officially part of hip hop culture. In Russia, the birth of skate falls at the end of the 90s, and is also associated with the development of rap music and large «street» extreme festivals. You can recall Snickers Urbania, Old Spice and many other events where all kinds of street culture were presented as a single block”.
At the beginning of June, our team, with the submission of Roman (Katana), went to Izhevsk, where we successfully met local activists led by Andrey Rogov. The team demonstrated their unique style and approach and generally received us very hospitably and friendly.
The next stages of the project took place in St. Petersburg and in the city of Sosnovy Bor, Leningrad Region, where several advanced skateparks were built by local activists. The topic of training in sports skateboarding there is at a high level, not least thanks to the efforts of local activists from the organization «House on the Wheels», which, in addition to sports itself, is also engaged in purely social topics. By the way, they even have a skateboarding simulator project for people with disabilities.
Our third visit took place in Arkhangelsk, where local activists also gave us extensive interviews, demonstrated their author’s approach to the organization and generally showed an outstanding activist position in the development of the street culture of the region.
The fourth stage of the project was supposed to take place in Moscow, but it never fully took place due to political events (measures to counter the Prigozhin rebellion).
Nevertheless, as part of the Voice of Skateboarding, we held 3 online sessions with representatives of all the mentioned cities and the international skate community. We were in touch with: Brazil, USA, Spain and Kenya. The crew from Russian cities also had the opportunity to exchange, not only with colleagues around the world, but also to get to know projects from other cities in Russia better.
It seems that the Voices of skateboarding have shown a good relationship between various street culture practices and the possibility of creating a common cultural field. We are waiting for new projects next season!