Rosewarn Skate Park Project

Curo Housing
Curo Housing | 2018 | Whiteway, Bath

Rosewarn Skate Park Project

idverde’s Greenspace Development Team was pleased to work with young Curo Housing residents in Whiteway, Bath, in August 2018 as part of idverde’s commitment to community engagement.

idverde’s Client Liaison Manger Ben Pryke worked with the Curo Housing client officer to engage with local children by arranging for Sam Gaden from local graffiti crew Rotten Apples to run a graffiti workshop at Rosewarn skatepark. Sam is a professional graffiti artist and a qualified youth worker, and has been engaging with young people and running painting workshops for around seven years.

The event was phase one of three planned events with the aim of engaging with local children in a fun way so they would take pride in and ownership of their local skatepark, which had often been the site of graffiti ‘tagging’ and was looking untidy and unloved.

The day started with a small group of local young people drawing designs which would then be transferred to the park’s skate ramps. Most of the children wanted to paint their names, so Sam helped them to adapt these into a ‘graffiti’ style.

Sam explained the fundamentals of graffiti and how designs should work, for example drawing a full character on a small board is difficult as small lines can be hard to achieve with a spray can.

Once the children’s rough designs had been finalised they were shown how to “mark up” their designs on the ramps in dark grey (the background had already been painted black), with idverde’s Ben Pryke also on-hand to help with marking up and filling the gaps. Once they were happy the children could start with their block colours to fill in the main aspects of the design. Once this was done the block colours were outlined in black so that the designs really stood out.

By the end of the day the skate park had been transformed. The children were extremely proud of their work and it is hoped they will continue to take pride in their skate park.

idverde looks forward to continuing to support Curo Housing residents in the area. The next phase of the project will see the ramp resurfaced with Tractol paint to improve it further.