DIY Design and Radical Worldbuilding at The Grove Skatepark, London

Abstract

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of DIY design practices at a skatepark in London, UK. The skatepark is presented as an urban commons, offering a framework for DIY infrastructuring that contrasts top-down and inequitable urbanisation processes. Three key themes emerge from the fieldwork that demonstrate the capacities and limitations of DIY design. Firstly, DIY practices are viewed as “learning-by-doing”, wherein skateboarders not only learn how to construct a skatepark but also an array of vocational and soft skills. Here, DIY’s qualities of low barriers to participation, multidisciplinarity, and low risk of failure foreground a rich environment of vernacular knowledge exchange that underpins the research methodology of this paper utilising skatepark construction as object-orientated, research-through-design. Secondly, DIY design is found to support a community of practitioners that transcend the space as just a skatepark, incorporating a community garden, collaborative theatre project and arts-based workshops that transcend male-dominated histories of DIY skateboarding cultures. Here, Participatory Design (PD) notions of ‘infrastructuring’ mirror an emergent and open-ended design process that supports inclusive socio-material worldmaking. Thirdly, DIY design practices influence the ways in which the space is governed, in which there are found to be contradictory notions of “prefigurative politics.” Here, the space is argued to be inclusive and anarchic yet centres agency around notions of “core skateboarding” that reinforce masculine hegemonies. Collectively, this paper argues that DIY design has the potential to serve as a worldmaking agent underpinned by a unique set of values and modes which are well-suited to times of uncertainty, flux and crisis, yet highlights the necessity for critically engaging with the politics and practices of both DIY and skateboarding communities.