Milton Keynes’ shopping centre, centre:mk, supported an exhibition from the 27 September until 22 December 2019.

The donated shop space was transformed into an exhibition of Milton Keynes’ skateboarding history filled with personal collections loaned by local skaters from fashion, art, and decks to magazines. It also displayed a range of documentary photos, archive cine and video footage from MK skaters from the past. The exhibition was visited by some 3,700 people. Exhibition highlights included mementos from the 1970s; a rare pair of DC Buszy trainers; along with many hard-to-source examples of domestic and international magazine coverage of Milton Keynes in both photographic and video format.

The exhibition was supported by local charity, Men in Sheds, who, led by local volunteer Andrew Armes, made all the display cabinets, the design of which emphasised the DIY culture of skateboarding. In total,1,625 volunteer hours were donated to the project.

A series of talks and workshops for children and adults accompanied the exhibition. This included talks from Professor Iain Borden and skate legend Matt Pritchard; photography workshops led by Leo Sharp; video workshops led by Ryan Gray; and artist and skater Tom Guilmard leading deck painting sessions.

The project culminated in the printing of a 100-page hardback book covering the skateboarding history of the town and a section on how we ran the project. This achieved the Bronze Award, Publishing category, in the Creativepool Annual 2021.