On Go Skateboarding Day, AIR is hosting a Skate Symposium in collaboration with activist and community organizer Kim Butter. Where does Rotterdam stand as a skateable city? And why is it interesting to look at public space and through the eyes of skaters and urban sporters?

Skate Symposium: Rethinking Public Space and Governance explores different possibilities that skateboarders can add to public spaces, both with their presence on the streets and their vision for the city. Get inspired by the approach of the French city Bordeaux and get to work on this theme in one of the subsequent workshops.

Professional skater and skate mediator Léo Valls will travel to Rotterdam to explain more about his practice. He returned to his hometown of Bordeaux after years of professional skating and found that his city had become unskatable. Skating was banned in many places and a lot of skate resistant design was applied. Léo became the driving force in a transformation from skate resistant city with conservative policies to a fruitful collaboration between skateboarders and the Bordeaux city council. How did he achieve this, and what can we learn from this for the Rotterdam context?

Programme

13:30 – 14:00 Doors open
14:00 – 14:45 Keynote by Léo Valls
14:45 – 15:00 Panel with Christophe Cornille and Johan van Herpen, moderated by Dore van Duivenbode
15:15 – 16:45 Various workshops in collaboration with Mike van Staten (Studio for New Realities), Christophe Cornille (landscape designer municipality of Rotterdam), Léo Valls, Kim Butter, Victor Verhagen (LAGADO Architects) & Atelier OUI
16:45 – 17:00 Closing & conclusion
17:00 – 17:30 Informal after talk

On view is an installation with portraits of skaters of Museumpark, titled ‘Save Museumpark: Scattered and Confused’. An initiative of Seline Verloop in collaboration with Save Museumpark and Onderzoekscollectief Spit.

Moderation by Dore van Duivenbode

Practical Information

• Get your ticket throug the ticketlink below. If you visit this program, it is not necessary to buy a separate admission ticket for the festival heart. A ticket for this program already gives you access to the floating festival heart.
• On arrival, please report to the welcome desk of the Rotterdam Architecture Month at the square in front of the Maassilo. Here, scan your ticket and receive a wristband that will grant you access to the program in the floating festival heart. If you arrive 30 minutes before the start of the program, you can also walk the route through the festival heart.
• IMPORTANT! Do not go directly to the floating platforms without a (program) wristband, as you will not be granted access.

Tip: Go Skateboarding Day

On Go Skateboarding Day there will also be a trick contest at Skatepark Westblaak, you can join the Public Space Detective’s tour Skatable City and you can learn to skate at the Floating Skatepark in the festival heart with free lessons from Skateland. In the evening, you can also come skate freely in the Floating Skatepark during NEW WAVE’s mini-ramp session.