Skate to Screen — Campus Skateparks

A SKATE CINEMATOGRAPHY WORKSHOP: 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 cantake 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 mould of traditional teaching environments and put on a selection of industry specific courses and workshops using skateboarding at its core. Its time to take the classroom to the skatepark and the streets and engage the future generations in locations that they relate to.

This Behind the Scenes video will give you more insight on the 3 days

WHO WE ARE

The workshop is run by a collective of Bristol-based academics, educators, film-makers 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 realised during 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.

Ruth Farrar - SHEXTREME

Founding Director of Shextreme Film Festival and Shextreme Alliance: the world’s first international network training and supporting female adventure filmmakers and photographers. She is also a Reader in Creative Media & Enterprise at Bath Spa University. Ruth’s mission is to improve gender equity and diverse representation in action sports media-making.
Bella Warley - Skateboard GB

After volunteering with Palestinian skateboarding charity 'SkatePal' in 2015/16, Bella then made the move to Youth Development worker at Campus. There she oversees the youth services Campus offers, various educational programs including 'Get Your Bearings', partnerships with local community groups and schools. She pushes to create more opportunities and exposure in women’s skateboarding. Bella now works with Skateboard GB helping to create skateable spaces across the UK
Sim & Dan Higginson - Clockwise Film

Two brothers brought up on a diet of skate film VHSs who transferred their love of filmmaking into a profession. With a combined 30 years of commercial industry experience working in sports and branded content they run clockwise.film

THE STORY SO FAR…..

Our first course took place in July 2021 in partnership with Vanguard exhibition’s summer outreach programme supported by Vans. 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 programme, 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. Day two was on location on the streets of Bristol where 4 teams were created to run as separate production units, as they would in the industry. The fun didn’t stop there as on day three they jumped into the edit and premiered all of their films at Campus Skatepark.