MK Skate
Working for over two years, Caterina led a community of more than 50 local skateboarders, through the MK Skake project which captured and told Milton Keynes’ unique skateboarding story through sharing memories, oral history, film and photography and through the exploration and archiving of personal collections.
Between June 2019 and December 2020, Caterina and the team delivered a city centre on-street exhibition and digital trail, an exhibition in centre:mk, a talks and workshop programme, the digitisation of over 60 films, and the production of a hardback book. Additionally, working with Living Archive Milton Keynes, 20 filmed oral histories were catalogued and made available online.
Skateboarding has been largely ignored by traditional social history collecting institutions. There was a risk prior to this project that Milton Keynes’ role in the development of UK skateboarding culture would be forgotten and that many artefacts would be lost forever. The cultural currency of skateboarding is documentation. This project highlighted the most significant material, it was all captured, where necessary digitised, and it will now be conserved centrally, at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, and preserved for the future.
The project included exhibitions, events and a publication
Exhibitions
Exhibition
On-street exhibition
Book
MK Skate - a history of skateboarding in Milton Keynes explores the seminal role Milton Keynes has played in the development of UK skateboarding culture.
The book pulls together spotlight features on key skate places; interviews with local skateboarders across three generations, from the punk pioneers of the ‘80s through to current local pro skaters; thought pieces from architects and designers including Iain Borden and Gustav Edén; pieces on or by leading skate figures with local significance such as Matt Pritchard and Phil Chapman; highlights the strong accompanying creative culture and the work of key photographers, such as Leo Sharp and Wig Worland whose images feature throughout the publication. It is designed by local skate Neil Bowen, of Zip Design.
It is authored and edited by the team behind Sidewalk Magazine: Ben Powell, Ryan Gray, Leo Sharp and Wig Worland.
Header film: Lindsay Knight
All photos: Wig Worland
All photos/films: Courtesy of Milton Keynes Council and the artists
Milton Keynes and skateboarding
Milton Keynes has played a seminal role in the development of UK skateboarding culture, and since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s it has been regarded by many as the skate capital of the UK. It sits alongside the Undercroft at London’s Southbank and the Rom Skatepark in Hornchurch in Essex as one of the three seminal places for skating in the UK, and is the only city-wide in scale. The MK urban aesthetic, which closely reflects that of many US cities, was/is also highly valued in a culture in which documentation, in photography and video, is central. As such, MK has featured more than any other UK city in hugely influential skateboard magazines, and in innumerable skateboarding videos. It is an important story that until now has remained unrecorded and largely unknown outside of the skate community.