Young people in Nottingham will soon be able to participate in free weekly skateboarding lessons.
Local social enterprise Skate Nottingham announce that they are partnering with international charity Concrete Jungle Foundation (CJF) to become the first organisation in the UK to deliver CJF’s ‘Edu-Skate’ programme, joining a network of skateboarding non-profits in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Jamaica, Morocco and Peru.
Skate Nottingham is an award-winning social enterprise dedicated to growing the benefits of skateboarding in the city and wider Nottinghamshire area.
Since launching in 2017, their programmes have engaged more than 3,000 local young people and adults.
In February half-term, they collaborated with Concrete Jungle Foundation (CJF) and Free Movement Skateboarding (FMS) to deliver free beginners’ skateboarding lessons to 100 children in one of Nottingham’s most disadvantaged areas.
CJF have developed Edu-Skate, a positive youth development programme that teaches 11 life-skills within skateboarding sessions.
Edu-Skate has already reached more than 1,000 children in 6 different countries.
This follows Skate Nottingham’s recent receipt of a grant from Sport England and the National Lottery’s Queen’s Platinum Jubilee programme, to deliver free sessions in inner-city Nottingham along with training for coaches that included five places on Skateboard GB’s ‘Get Rolling’ coaching course.
Since the end of March, Skate Nottingham have been delivering these sessions at the Brendon Lawrence Sports Centre, St Ann’s, so far engaging a total of 61 young people aged between 7 and 14. Sessions have grown from 15 participants in the first week, to 27 by Week 9. Sixty per cent of participants describe themselves as coming from a Black, Asian or other Ethnic Minority background, and almost half of participants are girls.
The sessions enabled by Sport England funding will provide the perfect environment to deliver Edu-Skate.
The sessions take place every Saturday, at 10.30am until 12.00pm and are totally free-of-charge, including free skateboard and helmet loan, with qualified coaches (including DBS and child safeguarding training). From 18th June onwards, the sessions will move to the small skatepark at King Edward Park, Sneinton. Anyone aged 7 and above is welcome to join in, with updates on venue location and pre-booking for equipment loan via Skate Nottingham’s social media.
Chris Lawton, Skate Nottingham co-founder and Community Development Officer at Skateboard GB said:
“A grant from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Award has enabled us to give young people a great introduction to skateboarding for free, whilst enabling Skate Nottingham to learn from international best practice.
“We’re blown away by the amazing progress of the young people, both in their skateboarding and their wider development and we can’t wait to start delivering life-skills with the awesome partners of the Edu-Skate Worldwide Network.”
