On Saturday 7th July, we took You Can’t Move History to Gateshead, for the first of our travelling screening series.
The fantastic Arch Sixteen Café hosted us as part of Roots of a Scene, an all-day event combining workshops, film, artwork and discussion, in collaboration with Shred the North and academics from Northumbria University’s Accidental Youth Club.
An exhibition of photographs and artwork collected and curated by Shred the North’s Dave Apomah brought together over three decades of skateboarding in the North East, and the event was attended by several generations of local skaters.
The heritage of the North East skate scene was further explored through mapping exercises organised by Mike Jeffries, Sebastian Messer and Jon Swords.
Screenings in the afternoon and evening – separated by England’s World Cup quarter-final win against Sweden – were followed by a lively discussion between local skaters and Paul Richards, who talked about his role in the Long Live Southbank campaign, and the lessons to be learned for protecting skating’s cultural and physical heritage elsewhere.