Grey Spaces, Public Planning Places and Urban Play: Skate, create, educate

Date: Friday, 18th October 2024

Time: 5:30pm—7:00pm

Location: Chau Chak Wing Museum

Hero image: Skate sculpture render. Credit to Dr Sanne Mestrom

Skateboarding is a subculture engaging youth and adults on the margins while also now an Olympic Sport where skaters can reach their full potential yet can still be stereotyped. In the past, skateparks and spots have also traditionally been 'quarantined' to areas that are isolated, lack creative elements for a range of users, and neglect questions of spatial justice, sustainability and the environment. In less progressive cities, skateboarding and other creative sports like roller skating and parkour can also be 'off-limits' for urban play, with these activities often misunderstood and banned in public spaces such as plazas and where young people and all kinds of active communities could otherwise gather and thrive.

This panel ‘flips the script’ by highlighting how skateboarding can become a vibrant part of often under-used landscapes, creating unexpectedly safer, lively, and joyful public spaces that enhance social connection, personal confidence, health and well-being, advancement of physical skills and a canvas for creativity. In contemporary times, worldwide, cities like Bordeaux in France, Malmo in Sweden, Helsinki in Finland, and Barcelona in Spain are beginning to embrace skating and related activities in creative and inclusive ways. This panel is an occasion for leading voices from skateboarding, academia, and architecture in Australia to reflect on how cities here can also begin to incorporate creative activities and elements into public spaces for urban play. This is also an occasion to welcome the public to see cities differently and more creatively and inclusively through the perspective of leading change-makers including Nick Hayes, founder of First Nations company Spinifex Skateboards (NT), Timothy Lachlan, founder of WCMX (wheelchair) and Adaptive Skateboarding, Australia (QLD), Poppy Starr Olsen, professional skater, artist and Olympian, Tokyo Games (NSW) and HY William Chan, architect and Councillor, City of Sydney. Chaired by Dr Indigo Willing, skateboarder, co-author of ‘Skateboarding, Power and Change’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2023), Visiting Fellow at SSSHARC for the Skate, Create, Eduate and Regenerate (SkateCER) project, USYD and a 2024-2025 Churchill Fellow.

There will be also be an opportunity to interact with three new playable artworks/ ‘skate dots’ at The University of Sydney by public artist Dr Sanné Mestrom from the Art/Play/Risk project before the panel as part of the City Canvas Symposium 17-18 October, followed by an occasion to meet the artist and chat with panellists and all the skaters and collaborators involved with the Skate, Create, Educate and Regenerate (SkateCER) project over drinks after the panel.

Confirmed Speakers

Poppy Starr Olsen, Newcastle based skateboarder and Olympian. Pride Ambassador for Australian Sports Commission. Sport Australia Hall of Fame inductee.

HY William Chan, Sydney based architect, USYD lecturer and Councillor, City of Sydney.

Timothy Lachlan, WCMX and Adaptive Skateboarding Australia founder, Queer and disabilty activist and elite wheelchair athlete.

Nicky Hayes, proud Arrernte man, Traditional Owner for Ltyentye Apurte, skateboarder, founder of Spinifex Skateboards, and advocate for Indigenous youth.

Chaired by

Dr Indigo Willing, SSSHARC Visiting Fellow, USYD

Dr Sanne Mestrom, DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer, College of Arts, USYD.

Poppy Starr  ONLY took up skating at age eight, and in 2014 she was crowned world under 14s champion, continuing her reign the following year in the over 15s category. In 2016, Poppy was the first Australian woman to compete at the Summer X Games, and in 2017 she won bronze in the women’s skateboard park as well as gold at the inaugural World Roller Games in Nanjing, China. Fast forward to 2021 and Poppy burst onto the world stage when she made her Olympic debut in the women’s skateboarding in Tokyo, finishing fifth overall.

Poppy is also a Sport Australia Hall of Fame awardee (2018) and was a 2023 Pride in Sport Ambassador for the Australian Institute of Sport.

HY William Chan  is a Sydney architect, urban planner and recent fellow in sustainable cities with the UN, advocating for youth and climate justice. Will was educated at the University of Sydney, where he was awarded the University Medal in Architecture. He has since practiced within the City as an architect and urban planner, is a Councillor for the City of Sydney, and lectures at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at Sydney University. Will is named on Forbes magazine's ‘30 Under 30’, in the top 20 of ‘100 Inspiring Australians’ by Qantas, and the top 25 most influential people in the social sector by Pro Bono Australia. He is also in the Top 200 Asian Australians of the Year for 2024.

Timothy Lachlan (he/they) is the founder of WCMX and Adaptive Skateboarding Australia. He is a queer, disabled, neurodivergent, young person, an Occupational Therapy (OT) graduate and the first Australian to land a wheelchair backflip. He was also an invited athlete who skated with Tony Hawk on a recent tour to Australia in January 2024.Tim has lived experience of disability and intersectionality. Tim uses Adaptive Skating as a tool to teach others with disabilities various mobility skills and advocate for universal design. His passion for inclusion has led him to join the panel and project. Tim’s Website

Nick 'Nicky' Hayes is an Arrernte man and Traditional Owner from Ltyentye Apurte and the founder of Spinifex Skateboards. His projects include developing the First Nations Skate tour for youth and being one of the leading figures in the creation of the first indoor skatepark and new outdoor skatepark in Ltyentye Apurte/Santa Maria.  He is also a filmer and skateboarder in Songline Skateboards, the continent’s first Indigenous skate team.  He is also a public speaker including at Melbourne Design Week.

Dr Indigo Willing is a war orphan, skateboarder, has a PhD from The University of Queensland and is the co-author of Skateboarding, Power and Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) with Anthony Pappalardo. She is the co-chair for the international advisory board for Skateistan, who build skateparks and education programs globally. Indigo is currently a Visiting James Social Science Fellow working on the Skate, Create, Educate and Regenerate project and a 2024 faculty member for the Hunt-Simes Institute in Sexuality Studies HISS Faculty at The University of Sydney at The Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC). In September 2024 Indigo was also awarded a Churchill Fellowship.

Dr Sanne Mestrom’s practice-led research seeks to incorporate “play” into a socially engaged practice as a means to question the social consequences of urban design. Her current research investigates ways that art in public places – and urban design more broadly - can become critically integrated, inclusive and interactive spaces. To do so, her projects bring together sculpture and the body to examine the role of art in rewriting current definitions of ‘play’ as relating to the physical, experiential and ideological conditions of ‘place’. Creating temporary and permanent sculptural forms that respond to the built environment and our movement through it, softens the separation of art and everyday life; it is through this ‘softness’ that play has the potential to open up a space to escape certain logics, and denying logic is itself a subversive – and therefore political– action.

Festival of Public Urbanism 2024

Great cities are defined by the quality of their public realm. From parks to civic architecture, well designed public infrastructure supports and enables the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of urban life. But are these public assets, along with public processes of urban governance and planning, under attack? Over the past fifty years key legacies of the modern urban project – such as publicly funded housing and urban infrastructure; or comprehensive planning for new development – have been eroded by waves of political and economic reform. Faith in market based ‘solutions’ has reduced public planning processes to ‘red tape’ and replaced public investment in rental housing with subsidies for private investors and households. At the same time, digital transformation under ‘platformisation’ has seen private corporations able to evade domestic regulations, disrupting every facet of urban life and governance.

The Festival of Public Urbanism will debate these topics and more. Join us to engage with academics, activists, politicians, industry leaders through our program of panel discussions, walking tours, and podcasts across Sydney and Australia.