Urban skateboarding, social enterprise groups, and community capacity-building in the San Francisco Bay area

Abstract

Urban skateboarding’s current community includes a diverse range of participants and an ever-increasing array of “social enterprise” conglomerations involving city councils, private industries, and nonprofit organizations. We conducted a three and a half-year ethnographic study of San Francisco Bay Area skateboarding, in part, to understand how these evolving public-private entities use skateboarding to build “community relationships”. Research suggests that social enterprise groups aim to develop social capital in underserved urban contexts. Community capacity development encourages social capital, but more intentionally addresses the emergence of socially inclusive and democratic values as well as socially aware learning cultures to benefit youths and their local communities. We used two Oakland, California, case studies of For the Town (FTT) skateboarding and the Skate Like a Girl (SLAG) organization, to exemplify how community capacity-building strategies and practices may occur within urban skateboarding, while also highlighting challenges to this type of practice.

La communauté actuelle du skateboard urbain regroupe une diversité de participants croissante autour d’entreprises sociales impliquant des conseils municipaux, des entreprises et des organizations à but non lucratif. Nous avons mené une enquête ethnographique de trois ans et demi sur la pratique du skateboard dans la région de San Francisco, afin de comprendre comment ces acteurs des secteurs privés et publics utilisent le skateboard pour renforcer les liens communautaires. Les recherches actuelles suggèrent que ces groupes d’entreprises sociales visent à renforcer le lien social (capital social) dans les contextes urbains les plus démunis. En plus du développement de ces liens communautaires qui renforcent le capital social des participants, ces actions sociales cherchent intentionnellement à développer des valeurs à caractère démocratiques et socialement inclusives. Ces apprentissages ciblent non seulement les jeunes, mais également toute la communauté locale. Notre enquête s’articule autour de deux études de cas situés dans la ville d’Oakland en Californie; les associations For the Town (FTT) et Skate Like a Girl (SLAG). Ces deux exemples permettent d’illustrer la manière dont la pratique du skateboard est utilisée pour renforcer les liens communautaires ainsi que de souligner les difficultés rencontrées dans ce type d’initiative sociale.

Keywords:

• community capacity
• social justice
• skateboarding
• social enterprise
• Sport for Development and Peace (SDP)

Mots clés:

• capacité communautaire
• justice sociale
• skateboarding
• entreprise sociale
• Sport for Development and Peace (SDP)

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Anne Schmitt for translating the abstract and also several materials provided in the reference list.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Skateistan is an NGO founded in 2006 that uses skateboarding to build skills and confidence in girls, children with disabilities, and children from low-income backgrounds. Skateistan originated in Afghanistan and has expanded to several other countries (Skateistan, n.d.).

2. The Oakland Skatepark Summit was a community informational event hosted by the nonprofit Tony Hawk Foundation at an Oakland brewery and co-sponsored by SLAG, FTT, and the California Endowment foundation.

3. Pseudonyms are used when referring to previous SLAG leaders. Current leaders are identified by their actual names.

4. The Alliance for Girls is a nonprofit organization that brings together schools, community leaders, and girls’ organizations dedicated to elevating young women and girls through collaboration (Alliance for Girls: Our Work, n.d.). Our work. Retrieved from https://www.alliance4girls.org/what-we-do/.