You’re taking a leisurely stroll down Southbank – dodging tourists, picking up a second hand book from the market, gazing at London’s skyline from the river, and inhaling as much of the sickeningly addictive smell of nuts cooking nearby as you can. Then suddenly you hear some rhythmic rumbles splatting like small rocks hitting concrete. You track it down, and wiggle through a crowd of spectators, and learn that the sounds are coming from the skateboarders at Undercroft Skate Space, a brutalist skatepark built beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The space has become a kind of riverside entertainment for tourists, attracting curious passers-by and also keen boarders themselves. But it’s also been much more than that.
When Southbank Centre was constructed in the 1960s, it was a covered space beneath the building and for a decade it remained largely unused. Then around 1973, skateboarders discovered it and were enticed by the space's natural banks, ledges shaped by the mushroom columns supporting the buildings above, and the shelter from the UK’s regular rain spells. The space was never sanctioned as a skate spot, never purpose-built or funded by anyone but the skateboarders who built it. But it became the heartbeat of London’s skateboarding scene, and what came from it was a sense of culture and belonging that ended up being documented worldwide – even modelled in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4.
Then in 2004, the Southbank Centre boarded up two thirds of the skate area to use as storage. The beloved small banks and the wooden driveway ramp (which is legendary in skateboarding history) vanished and, in 2013, the Festival Wing redevelopment scheme planned to close the Undercroft entirely and relocate skateboarders to a different space under Hungerford Bridge. From this, the Long Live Southbank campaign formed in April 2013 and mobilised 150,000 signatures of support, drawing backing from English Heritage, the National Theatre’s artistic director Nick Hytner and eventually then-mayor Boris Johnson who declared the space as “the epicentre of UK skateboarding” and part of London’s cultural fabric. On 18 September 2014, a binding Section 106 agreement guaranteed Undercroft's long-term future. Three years later the space was restored with new lighting, repaved sections and the re-installation of those legendary banks and ledges.
And now, at 50 years old, the free creative space is still being used and loved intensively today. It’s also being celebrated as a cultural monument as part of Southbank Centre’s Skate 50 exhibition, running at the skatepark until 21 June this year. “This space that was designed with no real purpose has become a powerful creative hub," says Cedar Lewisohn, the curator of Skate 50, whose background spans the Tate institutions and the London Museum. "It's hard to pinpoint why," he continues, "but there's something spiritual about it. In part because it's next to the Thames. The brutalist architecture draws people, but there's something deeper – a certain magic that can never be defined."
For the exhibition, Lewisohn and his team – working with Woods Bagot on design and, crucially, with the active skate community itself – have commissioned new work from artists deeply embedded in skateboarding culture. Filmmaker Winstan Whitter, who spent his teenage years at the Undercroft, facilitated workshops with different generations of skaters to identify the key moments across five decades. His conversations revealed the stories that shape the exhibition such as the arrival of early skateboarders, the evolution of tricks and styles, the women and people of colour who've built alternative scenes within the space.
Dan Magee – who built the company Blueprint Skateboards alongside Alvin Singfield in 1996 partly through connections made at the Undercroft – revisits the space with his own archival footage, tracing how skateboarding existed there before it became "official". Jack Brooks, videographer for the brand Palace Skateboards, has mined the company's archives – a task that required him to "meticulously catalogue" footage spanning decades. Animator Sofia Negri has created stop-frame sequences that distill the energy of the space. Beatrice Dillon, a sound artist working with composition and spatial installation, has commissioned a new piece. There's also work from Keep Rolling Project, the collective combining skateboarding and education to serve underrepresented communities. Palace founder Lev Tanju has also contributed his perspective as someone who moved to London in 1998 and built a global brand partly through the networks and culture fostered at Southbank. "The whole process has been a dialogue with different members of the skate community," Lewisohn explains. "I've learnt so much through all these conversations."
This collaborative approach – letting skaters tell their own stories rather than curating from outside – is fundamental to the exhibition's integrity and the history of the Undercroft, which represents a thriving free public space at a time when skateparks and community spaces are closing. “I hope people can be immersed in the richness of skate culture, gaining knowledge on how important a community the Southbank Centre is for skaters,” says Lewisohn. “I think skaters set an example of alternative ways to interact with urban space, and that mindset is linked to a way of thinking that is always questioning systems. With Skate 50, we have really tried to let the skaters tell their own story.”
Skate 50 is running at Undercroft, Queen Elizabeth Hall, until 21 June 2026. Find out more here
