The fight to keep Southbank from relocation took a new twist last week with the Long Live Southbank campaign skating onto the steps of Lambeth Town Hall to deliver Councillor Diana Braithwaite over 14,000 individual objections on paper. In the same week, the Southbank Centre admitted that they have decided to delay their plans to push forward with their planning application, bringing a few smiles to the faces involved in the fight as they roll forward with a passionate campaign to keep the history of SB intact.
The Southbank Centre (SC) issued a statement last week, saying: “The Festival Wing project has huge potential to reach out and change the lives of thousands of local children and young people … but we also want our skateboarders and BMXers to continue to think of this as their home. It is for this reason we have asked Lambeth council to allow us more time to review whether our scheme is achieving the very best balance of opportunities for current and future generations, and they have agreed to this.”
The SC have now taken their appeal a little further by reaching out to people walking past the Undercroft in a new sign erected outside the Royal Festival Hall and a new video statement made by Artistic Director Jude Kelly. Also, tendors for the new proposed design underneath the Hungerford Bridge are apparently being prepped as we write this. It’s a strange battle, made up of passion, history, values and pride, but the message is clear. The SC want to work with us, but need everyone to move. Where this loggerhead situation moves to now is up to the Council and partly relies on the Village Green application under the Commons Act of 2006.
Ph: Jenna Selby
The spanner is now locked firmly in place due to the commitment of the LLSB on behalf of skateboarders, where we all go from here is the next chapter. Until more fresh news arrives, listen to what street artist and 80’s southbank skateboarder D*face has to say about the campaign, and await a graff related response in video feature from this Thursday.
Also note that a book is being collated right now, so if you have any submissions then send your photos, artwork and stories to longlivesouthbank@gmail.com for possible inclusion, and also read the Guardian’s most recent article that ran yesterday about the state of skatebaording in your area. Click here to feedback.
This demo was announced only 2 weeks before they landed at Heathrow. David Gonzalez and Curren Caples could not be present due to family unforeseen commitments and they are both in our thoughts today as family alays comes first. As Flip take this family aspect of life so seriously, they pulled out every stop to make this demo as good as it could be for you without two of their finest team riders. With Ben Nordberg dislocating his elbow in the week proceeding the demo too (get well soon mate), demo monster Greyson Fletcher flew into London with very little notice as cover. He had just spent time in Europe smashing everything he skated to pieces, including taking the prestigious first place spot at the Prado Bowl in Marseille last week, and had flown back to California. All options were looked into to make ammends for these changes in the week leading up to this demo, so hats off to all involved for making a mammoth effort to appease the visitors who attended this one. I cannot express how much effort went into this.
Some bands are content to rest on their laurels. Too many bands are happy to make the same record over and over again, never really moving forward, never progressing for fear of alienating their audience, too scared to take risks, frightened what it might do to their career, their finances.
Only last October Canadian oddball punk trio NoMeansNo headlined The Underworld in Camden to a sweat-drenched, heaving crowd of rabid fans hanging onto every note and word. Fast forward seven months and the band are back in the capitol, doing it all over again for yet another (mainly repeat custom) crowd, crammed into the smaller confines of The Lexington, waiting to be barraged yet again with two-hours of the jarring, inventive high-energy punk rock that the band have made their own. And it is for this reason that NoMeansNo continue to pull crowds across the world well over thirty years since they formed with almost no help or awareness from the mainstream media. NoMeansNo are far too original and forward thinking to fit in the tidy, neat easy-to-understand boxes that the mainstream media like their artists to fit in. 
