Advertisement
Activism

Changemakers: Campus Skatepark is engaging with Bristol’s youth

Andre Seidel and Tim Nokes run a sopcial enterprise that uses the power of skateboarding to run clubs, classes, parties and exhibitions

This week’s Changemakers Top 100 special edition features the world’s leading thinkers, shakers and agitators. Throughout the week we’ll be highlighting just a few online.

This social enterprise uses skateboarding to engage with Bristol youth, running two skateparks and a skate shop in the area. The Big Issue Invest-backed organisation approaches youth work as something best achieved when kids can socialise away without “pressure to conform” – revolves around skateboarding, and its anti- establishment connotations, is no coincidence.

Directors Andre Seidel and Tim Nokes launched the business in 2011 and have since amassed thousands of members. The weekly timetable across its two venues – ‘The Pool’ and ‘The Park’ – includes toddler takeovers, skate tuition, bike nights, rollerblading lessons and girls-only sessions. There are regular week-long ‘skateschools’ on offer too, and the space is used to host exhibitions and parties.

The youth work involved is deliberately informal, with all staff trained in how to communicate with kids but keeping the focus on mentorship through skating. The social enterprise also runs a retail apprenticeship, with some of the young people coming up through it and into employment with the business.

Now the focus is on making Campus as accessible as possible. This year it’s in the process of bidding for funding to make free sessions available for kids who can’t afford them (last year it received a grant to buy equipment for disadvantaged children to hire before skating). The directors are also looking into setting up wheelchair access and classes for disabled people. Read more about Campus here.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

SIGN THE PETITION

Will you sign Big Issue's petition to ask Keir Starmer to pass a Poverty Zero law? It's time to hold government to account on poverty once and for all.

Recommended for you

Read All
As the government moves to ban Palestine Action, are terror laws being used for 'political policing'?
Yvette Cooper
Protest

As the government moves to ban Palestine Action, are terror laws being used for 'political policing'?

Disabled protesters say they'll stop Labour's benefit cuts – or die trying: 'I will fight my heart out'
Protesters in Cardiff outside their local MP's office with a sign saying 'welfare not warfare'
Disability benefits

Disabled protesters say they'll stop Labour's benefit cuts – or die trying: 'I will fight my heart out'

These scientists felt powerless over the climate crisis – so they decided to do something about it
Climate activism

These scientists felt powerless over the climate crisis – so they decided to do something about it

Meet the new Big Issue ambassadors helping to end poverty once and for all: 'We're in a fight'
Big Issue Ambassadors

Meet the new Big Issue ambassadors helping to end poverty once and for all: 'We're in a fight'

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue