You Can Make History
A collaboration between academics from the Universities of Sussex, Glasgow, East Anglia and Newcastle, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It follows on from a previous AHRC-funded project, “You Can’t Move History. You Can Secure the Future: Engaging Youth in Cultural Heritage”.
The first project focused on the Long Live Southbank (LLSB) campaign to save the Undercroft skate spot at London’s Southbank Centre from redevelopment. Until recently, the involvement of young people in heritage debates has typically been as part of a rhetorical strategy that serves to speak for them as future stakeholders. However, as the project demonstrated, the campaign to save the Undercroft was led by young people who were highly engaged political subjects capable of defining their own claims to urban space.
This project seeks to extend and develop this research, working alongside LLSB activists to chart the changing nature of the campaign and its impact beyond the Southbank. As LLSB start to work with the Southbank Centre on plans to restore previously closed-off areas of the Undercroft for use by skaters, we explore the importance of the old site to different generations of the Southbank community, the shift from conflict to collaboration with Southbank Centre, and the importance of the LLSB campaign in inspiring skaters and activists in London and beyond.
The first project generated the film You Can’t Move History which won the Best Research Film at the AHRC’s Research in Film Awards 2016. The sequel, You Can Make History, will document the work of the campaign since 2015 and the restoration project.