vol. #1 / 2015
The Transformative Power of Skateboarding
Nothing Impossible! The Transformative Power of Skateboarding by Ulrike Reinhard
Indrajeet Dixit, a Hindi teacher in a private school in Khajuraho, volunteered for our Janwaar Castle Summer Camp in June 2015. Janwaar Castle is a learning environment with a skatepark at its core. Janwaar itself is a small rural village in the northern part of Madhya Pradesh. 1,000 people live there in the eastern buffer zone of Panna National Tiger Park – four kilometers off the main road. There are 250 children in the village. It’s located in the middle of nowhere – so to speak. It has no electricity, no sanitation, no network coverage, no public transportation and not even a single shop. Indrajeet worked two or three hours every morning during the summer camp – dancing, painting, singing and skateboarding with the kids. In the third week he came to me one morning and said: “I’ve written a song. A Janwaar Castle song.” He was holding a piece of paper in his hand on which the lyrics were written in Hindi. I felt humbled. And I encouraged him to sing the song for us. It didn’t take long and the kids caught up the refrain and joined the chorus. It was fun. You could see how much Dixit and the kids enjoyed singing this song. It was immediately their song. They really owned it. The last few lines were in English – so I could understand. “Nothing impossible. We can do everything …“ To cut a long story short: these lines describe beautifully everything we do at Janwaar Castle and in next to no time it became our anthem. 4
But first things first. The idea of combining skateboarding and learning isn’t new. Skateistan in Kabul, Afghanistan, is probably the oldest and best-known example. It takes skateboarding as a tool for empowerment. So do we. Most of the children in Janwaar are underfed. They live just above poverty line. Too much to die, too little to prosper. No hope and therefore no aspiration. The children’s lives are somehow pre-defined, pre-set by their families, society, culture and environment. There’s no disruption. No change in sight. And the girls in particular have hardly any rights and no choice.
So how can skateboarding help to empower such kids? For us in Janwaar, the skatepark is an attractor. It’s engaging the children – girls and boys equally. There is no difference between caste and Adivasi. No one is excluded. The kids embrace the opportunity to play and enjoy. And once they’ve latched onto skateboarding much more becomes possible: things like community, education, leadership take on a new meaning. This builds 5
trust and social capital. The kids learn to fail. They fail without the scourge of bad grades or not staying in the class. So they fail and they learn. They fail again and they learn again. All by themselves. And they move forward astonishingly fast. This is what we have found over the last eight months since the skatepark “opened”. We’ve established a few rules – the most important are “No school, no skateboarding!” and “Girls first!” And they really do work. In addition to skateboarding we also bring in volunteers who work with the kids. They teach them English, they dance, paint, sing and tinker around. With the little ones we start early in the morning and wash them at the water pump right in front of the park. They’ve learnt to brush their teeth, and wash their tousled hair and skinny bodies. Once in a while we use tablets loaded with interactive learning programs and YouTube videos. The kids use them as to the manner born, as though they’ve done this all their lives. If possible, we bring in technology when it’s easily to integrate into the daily routines of the kids. Only then it will work. And a couple of times we hired cars and took the kids on a trip to the famous temples in Khajuraho and to Panna National Tiger Park. These “benefits” are reserved for those kids who go to school regularly and who help to 6
keep the skatepark clean. The principal of the government school, which is only a quarter of a mile away from the skatepark, said: “The skatepark has really helped the kids – they are clean, follow a routine and are cordial in their behaviour. They now want to be champions of a sport they never even had heard about one year ago. We’re seeing a lot of social change with kids moving in and out for competitions in the village. If this continues it will bring change to other neighbouring villages, blocks, districts and even to the entire province. Kids here have a lot of potential – whether it be academic, sports or painting. It’s just their circumstances that drive them to become labourers. We believe in this approach and would be happy to keep supporting this initiative.” Besides the social impact, the kids became incredible good skateboarders. They are also in better physical shape than they were before. Both boys and girls. The boys are more advanced when it comes to skateboarding, no doubt about that. But it’s a pure joy and very heart-warming to see the little girls having fun skateboarding. Some of them can hardly walk – but they stand firm on the board. Without any instructor they’ve learnt to ride the boards. They help each other and they train each other – so a lot of empathy and sharing is involved. And what they’ve learnt is that they can achieve something. That they are good at something. 7
Yes, I can! And this makes them proud and encourages them. It’s pretty simple really.
The Story of Janwaar Castle so far Janwaar Castle is a private initiative – no government and no NGO involved. It started almost three years ago. In the beginning the idea was to build a school in a rural area. But the more I learnt about rural India and the more I understood about its multitude of social fabrics, the more the idea of a traditional school lost its attraction. It simply didn’t make any sense to me to confront the kids in this part of the world with linear learning patterns and standardized testing when their lives are crying out for anything but this. So 18 months ago I decided to go for a skatepark and a learning hub envelopping it. The first thing I needed was a local support team in some shape or form. I managed to convince my landlord Shyamendra Singh aka Vini to join the project and support it. Vini owns Ken River Lodge – a place I visited when I first came to Khajuraho and where I now live. The lodge is located right next to Ken River, near the main gate of the Panna National Tiger Park – just at the opposite side of the park to where Janwaar is. It was our base during construction and all the volunteers stayed there in one of the cottages. 8
Vini clearly understood the opportunities the skatepark would provide for the kids and for the entire area. He
nailed it down to: “It is basically their only chance to get out!” He introduced me to Sanjay Tiwari and his wife Chandra Prabha Tiwari. They provided the land the skatepark is built on and supported us in so many ways during the construction phase. The bonds between Vini and the Tiwari family are close. As a team each of us brings in different skill sets and different perspectives – and if we do it right this can turn out to be a really rewarding experience for everyone involved. The second huge problem was money. Where would I get the money to build the skatepark? Inspired by a campaign in which well-known Indian artists painted cricket pads, working together with Bea Gschwend, a friend of mine in Germany, I came up with the idea of ARTBOARD / SKATEBOARD. We asked artists from around the world to turn a SKATEBOARD into an ART-BOARD. The plan then was to auction these ARTBOARDs on eBay. The invitation was taken up not just by celebrated “hotshot” artists such as Ai Weiwei from China but also by the local kids. In short, we assembled a richly diversified group of people who all wish to see and support social change – for a wide variety of reasons in a wide variety of forms. Finally we assembled a grand 9
total of 19 ARTBOARDs. The auction ran for 10 days and we made no less than $ 15;000. Just enough money to build Janwaar Castle. And then the third big thing was how to find the construction team to build the skatepark. My connections to Titus Dittmann, a skateboarding legend in Germany and his skate-aid e.V., a NGO completely devoted to skateboarding (they also supported us during the auction and they provide us with used skateboards and sets of helmets and safety pads), helped me to find Baumi Baumsen, a German skatepark builder. Under his leadership and with the help of the Bangalore-based Holystoked Collective around Abhishake, Attyta and Gautham D. Kamath and Steve Weightman’s Delhi-based freemotion sk8park, 12 young volunteers from seven countries started to build Janwaar Castle in December 2014. And what a great job they did! The park was finished in February 2015 – and the inbetween time was like a ride on a rollercoaster. Some of the team were challenged by rural India with all its inconsistencies, by their own ambition, by the weather – yes, it was very cold in late December and January – and once in a while also by me. Our backgrounds and cultures were too different, too various to make it all smooth going – but what counts in the end is the result. And we made it. It’s done and the smiling faces of the Janwaar kids make 10
everything else appear trivial. Once again my deep gratitude to all the volunteers! Janwaar Castle is 4,800 square feet in size and everyday – without even running any particular programs – we host between 40-60 children. Sometimes even more than that. Many of them have already become rockstars on the boards and they are lusting for more. At the moment our latest move is building a bamboo house right next to the skatepark which will be a place for indoor activities when the temperature drops. We’ve no specific plans
with the house yet so let’s see where this journey will be taking us.
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#1 Sanjay Tiwari aka Mantu, the owner of the land on which Janwaar Castle is built, does the “poojan” with Baumi Baumsen, our head of construction. #2 We’ve had a JCB for five days for getting the “ground” ready. #3 First material delivered. Gravel. #4 Lot of manual labour was necessary. Hard work. #5 First concrete was poured – first ramps took shape.
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#6 Slowly the various components of teh skatepark take shape. All kind of shapes are build in to garantee a nice flow while skateboarding. #7 Saurabh and Donald measuring the wood for the frames. #8 Building the frames for the biggest ramp in Janwaar Castle. #9, #10, #11 Qucikly the kids discovered the skatepark as their new playground.
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#12 First “steps� on the new toy required help. Me helping Priyanka to master the board.
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#13 Sepi, one of our best skatebarders, is helping Ankat, one of our youngest girl skateboarders. #14 Ankat was one of the first little girls who full heartedly embraced skateboarding. She was very courageous. #15 The elder girls were a bit more hesitant. #16 But quickly they’ve learnt and enjoyed their rides.
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#17 Getting ready for the ride – Ankosh (at the left) waiting for Puspen to get his safety gears on. #18 Farewell foto for our first German volunteer Marcel. #19 Girls hour at Janwaar Castle! #20 Arun mastering the highest ramp at Janwaar Castle. #21 Sepi in action. #22 Ajay – he is clued to the board. #23 Shivraj jumping the ramps.
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#24 Ankat and Lakshmi from our little girls crew :-) #25 And the “little� male crew: Ankosh, Dipun and Mohat (from the left).
#26 Last day of our summer camp. The kids holding up their certificates.
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