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Young people, power tools, and skateboards … what could possibly go wrong?
Where most people see an accident waiting to happen, Wānaka mum Kirsty Taylor saw an opportunity to engage young people on their own level, inspiring creativity while providing a safe space to learn hands-on skills through a skateboard art workshop.
Ms Taylor said the idea for the workshop came when she was shopping for clothes with her children at Boardhouse in Wānaka’s town centre when she noticed a skateboard hanging on the wall decorated in collage.
“I said it would be cool to do something with skateboards, collages and kids and asked if they had any old skateboards out the back.
“We started talking about this idea of running a workshop and also the aim of exposing young people to what the Wānaka Community Workshop has to offer.
With a background in teaching, technology and art Ms Taylor said she wanted to give young people the opportunity to use workshop machinery creatively.
“We gave them a bit of an introduction to the creative process, talking about design principles like balance and contrast and stuff like that.
“The kids came up with a concept. They used battery-operated disc sanders, and then they cut up magazines, glued on the background and then added their story elements.
“Everything was done by hand without any digital devices,” Ms Taylor said.
At the end of the day, attendees were asked to critique each other’s work, saying something successful about each design, and something that could have been better.
“They got a lot out of giving each other constructive feedback,” Ms Taylor said.
Ms Taylor said Boardhouse would display the skateboards, giving people the opportunity to vote for their favourite, with the aim of getting the winning design turned into a proper skateboard.
With the first workshop a success, Ms Taylor said they would run the event again, either in the next school holidays or over a couple of weekends before the competition took place.
evie.sinclair@alliedmedia.co.nz