We Skate Queensland
Photography: Peter Söndergaard
Evie Ryder
Welcome to the Sunshine State!
We Skate Queensland is a collective that holds skate events, art shows, skate jams, and workshops across southeast Queensland. They have a large focus on supporting women and gender-diverse skateboarders, but everyone is welcome! You don’t even need to skate: We Skate Queensland has collaborated with rollerskaters and WCMXers too. Their aim is to create an all-inclusive environment for skateboarding and arts in the region. They have a huge team of people working to make We Skate Queensland what it is, including Evie Ryder, Dr Indigo Willing, Tora Waldren, Millie Miljevic, Alex Blyth, Lily Turek, Vivi T, and Sophie Ross.
I spoke to two of the co-founders, Evie Ryder and Dr Indigo Willing to get a breakdown of what they’re doing up there and what the future of the collective looks like.
What is We Skate Queensland?
Evie: A fun and safe collective of individuals who want to connect, gather and skate together. We want everyone to have that joy of skating with friends and having a community. We do things from holding art competitions through our social media, to skate events where we have people compete and have fun with us.
Indigo: It isn’t just all about skateboarding, though. We’ve been collaborating with rollerskaters and WCMX and Adaptive Skate Australia. It is also both a collective and a hub for people who have an idea that they want supported. If you’re a first-time artist, or you’re a skater that has a music clip you want to show, or you’re wanting to have a social skate night. We are there to support that in ways that some of the bigger groups or organisations haven’t always made space for in the past. We want to have a space that is comfortable and supportive for everyone. There is also a serious side of We Skate too, up here in Queensland, there is a history of being pretty conservative, so we do try and speak up on these things.
“We first called it Girls Skate Brisbane... Eventually, as it grew and more gender-diverse people started skating with us, it seemed logical to have a broader and more inclusive name for the group ”
When did you start We Skate Queensland?
Indigo: We started in 2016 as Girls Skate Brisbane. Originally, when we first started skating, we were generally the only girls in the skatepark. It is the typical story that most girls who were skating in the early 2000s have: they felt that they were outnumbered and just tried to avoid skateparks or would go really early in the morning. So, we started a Facebook group called Girls Skate Brisbane, and it didn’t take long until we had a big crew of people. Then we started running events, and the numbers kept going up each time. We just wanted everyone to hang out, be themselves and have fun.
Yeah, so the group was originally called Girls Skate Brisbane. Why did you change the name, and what does ‘we skate’ mean to you?
Evie: We first called it Girls Skate Brisbane because we thought it was important to make a safe space for women and femme-identifying people to skate. Eventually, as it grew and more gender-diverse people started skating with us, it seemed logical to have a broader and more inclusive name for the group of people that we skate with. Now it just feels like a skate connection, helping people feel included and safe in the space.
Dr Indigo Willing
Indigo: Yeah, we were attracting all kinds of people, including a bunch of cis-men that didn’t feel like they could live up to the standards of skateboarding they felt pressured to achieve. In 2020, a good friend of ours called some of us out and said, ‘This is a diverse group of people that I skate with and non-binary people skate with, and having it be Girls Skate Brisbane isn’t as welcoming as you think.’ So, with the community, we came up with the name We Skate Queensland to be more gender diverse, and then we realised that the ‘We’ is an inclusive signal to people from all kinds of backgrounds to come skate with us. That includes people who might be refugees, people who have disabilities, and people from diverse sexual backgrounds. It was a gift to have someone call us out and push us to progress.
What is it like being a group with a focus on women and gender-diverse skaters in Queensland, which is arguably the country’s most conservative state?
Evie: For me, a lot of my work outside of skating is helping people out with transphobia, stigma, and drug and alcohol issues. I’m constantly working in spaces where I am tackling a lot of social stigmas. When I come to We Skate Queensland, it’s one of those places that are safe, and people kind of get it. It is like a mini break from society, in that sense, it’s like my own mini pride but in a skate world.
“I think we are at a point now where it is nice to reflect on the bigger picture and look at the world, thinking about what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, even when you don’t understand them or agree with the choices they’re making.”
Indigo: It can be really racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic up here. For the co-founders and our team, each of us brings in life experience that can help us address these issues within skateboarding. We use our platform to try to educate people, calling people in instead of calling people out, leading by example and helping them understand how cool it is to be inclusive. We have all experienced a different history that we bring to that. For me, I found myself experiencing a lot of racism through COVID for example; people were spitting on me and calling me ‘COVID’ on the street. Being able to have skateboarders come together and do the anti-racism art project we did was really cool. Especially after all that I’ve experienced.
How important is playing an active and vocal role in the community to changing narratives and ideas that people hold?
Evie: My motto is, ‘You have to build the community you want to live in.’ You can see lots of issues in the community, and I think that if you want to see change, you have to create that. That could be by working on yourself or connecting with your friends, family and neighbours, or even making a skate space like we’ve done—try to build the space that you want to see.
Indigo: I think we are at a point now where it is nice to reflect on the bigger picture and look at the world, thinking about what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, even when you don’t understand them or agree with the choices they’re making. It’s important to understand first rather than rush to judge because you’ll come to some better solutions in the long term. I think that is the best way to build up the community.
I know you have big plans for the future of We Skate. What’s next?
Indigo: We’ve got the spring jam for this year coming up. We want to include a community leaders’ program to accompany the jam, where we give people the opportunity to buddy up with a mentor from the skate community, so our skate event isn’t just run by the same people, but we have fresh people coming in, broadening it out and transferring the loads and skill sets. We aren’t trying to build a community so we can be big dogs, but so we can share things and reflect the skaters who are a part of We Skate Queensland. We’re also going to launch a We Skate Australia Network to highlight non-traditional and alternative skate scenes that are emerging across the country. We want to bring people together for The Spring Jam, a really fun, all-inclusive national event.
