IMPACT

As lifelong skateboarders, we know skateboarding has the potential to be life-changing. At Skate Haven, we try to give young people skills to empower themselves, the same way we were empowered, by sharing our passion and hoping it rubs off. It is a passion that gives people control over their bodies, confidence, and connection. We hope to show that the skateboard is an effective ‘platform for positive youth development’ (Asdonck, 2022).

Our Research

In 2024, our Cofounder, Miguel Nyberg, undertook a Master’s dissertation at UCL, focusing on our summer programming. This programme used a research-based “Edu-Skate” model (developed by Concrete Jungle Foundation), which is based on the Self-Determination Theory. With adjusted methods tailored to the local public health landscape, our research found that young people who took part in the Edu-Skate programme reported a range of significant improvements to their well-being in comparison to a control group (a group of young people from similar backgrounds who did not take part in the experiment). Parents also reported several lasting changes at home after follow-up interviews. Findings included:

  • Strong, statistically significant improvements in psychological and physical well-being as measured by established well-being surveys (KIDSCREEN-27)

  • Participant and parental accounts suggested young people had lasting improvements in their feelings of autonomy, social belonging, and emotional growth

Young people told us their highlights were things like “learning to drop-in”, having “everyone cheering for me”, and “inventing my own trick.” These moments capture some of the things that skateboarding does best: having people feel capable of achieving new things, exercising their creativity, and connecting to their peers

Wider Evidence

Our findings reflect a recent but growing global evidence base:

  • International initiatives like Skateistan and SkatePal show that skateboarding can empower children in some of the most challenging contexts worldwide.

  • The “Push to Heal” programme (developed at Hull Services, CA) combines skateboarding with the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics to support young people affected by trauma and maltreatment. Their research shows benefits for emotion regulation, self-efficacy, community connection, and reduced loneliness, highlighting skateboarding’s therapeutic potential for highly vulnerable groups (Hull Services, 2022; Bader, 2018).

How We Think it Works…

Resilience & Perseverance
Falling is part of skateboarding. You fall, you get back up, and you try again. That simple cycle teaches persistence and a “growth mindset”. Parents in our research noticed that their children carried this resilience into schoolwork and everyday life — they no longer gave up so quickly and did not feel as demotivated by setbacks.

Connection & Belonging
Skaters have to share space, take turns, and respect each other. A skatepark or any skateable spot can quickly become a community hub where encouragement and cheering are the norm. For young people at risk of loneliness or exclusion, this sense of belonging can be transformative. It is generally accepted that peer support is one of the strongest buffers against poor mental health (Eccles & Qualter, 2021).

Creativity & Autonomy
Unlike most other traditional sports, there are no set rules in skateboarding. Each person gets to decide exactly the way they want to engage with the skateboard. There are no goals and objectives, and its practice can be likened to the arts due to its expressive and performative nature. It is more like dance or figure skating. There is also a strong “do-it-yourself” atmosphere to the culture of skateboarding, which appeals to people who may perceive themselves to be “outsiders”. We argue that this makes skateboarding a great tool to reach people who may otherwise be “hard-to-reach”.

Flow & Focus
Skateboarding often brings people into a state of flow — a psychological state where time seems to disappear, and full focus is directed toward the task at hand. Flow experiences are strongly linked to happiness, motivation, and mental well-being. When young people experience flow through skating, they find a healthy outlet that channels stress into concentration and joy.


Where Do We Go From Here?

Skateboarding is still a fringe sport, although that is quickly changing, especially in the UK. 2024 marked the second time it was included in the Olympics, with a rapidly growing audience in relation to other sports and increasing visibility on social media, in commercial marketing, and among other public campaigns. Now is an apt time to be an early adopter in its social applications. At Skate Haven, we are trying to develop youth programming fit for a range of settings, from education to healthcare, to be at the forefront of its social utility in London.

What have we done so far?

2024

In 2024, we set out a 5-point plan for the year and we are proud to share that we achieved everything we set out to do! Our goals were the following:

1. Run a free summer programme
2. Facilitate research on the well-being benefits of skateboarding
3. Create more partnerships with local youth charities
4. Start running sessions in schools
5. Reach more young people, recruit trainees and volunteers

See our first annual report for 2024
See our Co-Director’s Master’s research dissertation

Skate Haven CIC began running skate sessions in the summer of 2021. In the following two years, we had hundreds of attendances to our free skate sessions at various youth charities in South London. We organised dozens of trips to skateparks across London and donated a handful of skateboards to young people who had discovered skateboarding was a passion that they wanted to continue practising independently.

In November 2022, Skate Haven partnered with Step Out Mentoring. Step Out Mentoring is an early intervention service based in South London that supports young people (aged 8-18) who are disengaged with education and/or life. Our coaches joined the mentoring programme and took on a year of mentoring each. On top of that, up until 2024, Skate Haven held free weekly sessions with larger groups of young people at Step Out. We formed strong partnerships with the young people, their families, and the staff at Step Out that have shaped our organisation to this day.

In April 2023, Skate Haven became a part of the Edu-Skate Worldwide Network (read more about Edu-Skate). This marked the beginning of Skate Haven’s application of the Edu-Skate framework to support the development of young people’s essential life skills (such as confidence, resilience, and creativity). This has developed Skate Haven’s capacity to run larger-scale structured programmes, implement monitoring and evaluation practices, and cooperate within inter-organisational networks with mutual objectives.

In June 2023, Skate Haven was awarded a grant from Charterhouse in Southwark, an old charity in Southwark that supports children, families, and communities in Southwark, to acquire skate obstacles and equipment. The bulk of this funding was spent on a series of skate obstacles that are still the backbone of Skate Haven’s mobile skatepark.

In November 2023, Skate Haven was awarded a grant from Sport England via the National Lottery-funded small grants programme, to train and pay coaches for the delivery of Edu-Skate in 2024. We used this funding to facilitate a research programme, facilitated by academics at UCL & Goldsmiths, to establish an evidence base for the well-being benefits of skateboarding. This was the most pronounced acceleration in Skate Haven’s growth.

In January 2024, Skate Haven moved its inventory and obstacles to the multi-sports facility, Decathlon in Canada Water. Skate Haven began holding two weekly sessions open to the public. Despite tight financial margins, resulting from maintaining low fees to participants, these sessions have been up and running every week since then.

2021-2023