Southbank Skate Space

Skate boarders, roller skaters and BMXers have been hanging out at the Southbank’s Undercroft since the ‘70s. Back then, the area had no chain restaurants, no street vendors and certainly no tourists. The Southbank was a barren stretch of pavement along the Thames that was home to ‘two pubs and a sweet shop’. Here, London’s first generation of skateboarders, borrowing from a culture that was growing in California, fell in love with the area’s abundance of make-shift concrete ramps (which they called ‘pigeon-shit banks’), open paved surfaces, blocks and railings. The Southbank Centre itself was an impenetrable office building, and the haughty people inside were not happy about the growing community of skaters that was gathering beneath it. Things are looking quite different these days.  In a new pay-what-you-can (and free for skaters) exhibition celebrating 50 years of the Southbank Skate Space (AKA the Undercroft), the Southbank Centre is telling the story of the iconic graffitied, low-ceilinged skate haven through oral histories, photographs, films and sound art.  As well as giving a granular timeline of the skate park, accompanied by vibrant photographs (although I would have liked a few more photos), Skate 50 is all about the Southbank’s resilient and pioneering skate community. There are recorded interviews with some of the park’s OG boarders – like Lorraine Rossdale, one of the first British female skaters in the 1970s. She recalls earning her stripes as the first...