Yardworks

Scotland's largest street art festival

Yardworks is a two-day community celebration of live and curated graffiti art which takes place every year in SWG3’s Galvanizers Yard and features more than 120 world-class artists. Over the course of the weekend, the festival welcomes over 5,000 guests & more than 700 metres of wall space is transformed into colourful murals.

As part of Clan Skates’ 30th anniversary celebrations, I approached SWG3 about hosting an indoor skateboarding jam in the Galvanizer’s Yard and Yardworks seemed liked the perfect opportunity to do so. The community spirit was incredible as so many friends devoted their time and came together to make the event possible. Skateboarders, ramp builders, instructors, DJs, film makers, the list was endless. We erected indoor ramps, organised competitions and some free skateboarding lessons for the public. I also created a video showreel with 30 years’ worth of archive footage which was played behind the DJs we invited to the event.

To promote the festival, I worked with Robbie Paton (Robot Love Creative) and pro-skateboarder Tom Shimmin to create a very simple video. With all of us on very busy schedules, we finally managed to get a tiny weather window one evening and shot this video from straight from the hip. This involved digging around in skips, standing on top of metal storage containers… and me swinging from the back of a metal gate. It was a really fresh approach to film-making, and in-keeping with the improvised creativity that naturally occurs within the world of skateboarding. We also enlisted the help of hip-hop DJ and producer Bunty to provide the music. The video was shot, edited and live on social media within 48 hours of filming and received thousands of views across our social media platforms.

SWG3 reported that it was their best ever year and received lots of praise from the attendees.

CLIENT
Clan Skates
& SWG3

SERVICES
Multimedia

YEAR
2019