TAKEOVER
SKATEBOARDING




Who we are
Takeover Skateboarding, is a BIPOC, LGBTQ+ & 2S, and women centred movement led by Ryme Lahcene, Taylor Lee, and the BIPOC community in “Vancouver”, the ancestral, unceded (stolen) territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples.
Our Mission
Takeover Skateboarding is a BIPOC, LGBTQ+ & 2S, and women-centered movement founded on community care models. We are collectively creating, carving out, and fostering intentional safe spaces for those who have historically been and are currently marginalized and underrepresented within skateboarding. We aim to offer and encourage peer learning and support in skateboarding, snowboarding, art, and beyond. Fostering play as an act of resistance, we are using skating and art as vehicles for radical conversations and movements. Our work is to encourage BIPOC youth to engage in fun and radical joy, to offer them space and safety to explore their own identities and interests.
Community
As individuals who are passionate about community and gathering, our work together began by offering art workshops geared towards youth with an emphasis on education and activation. Due to the lack of our communities representation in the media, youth can struggle to see themselves succeeding within the colonial landscape of dominant culture. By expanding the definition of success and offering opportunities to the talent we see around us we are dreaming into reality futures where new generations of Black, Indigenous, and historically marginalized young people can claim inherent rights to futures full of freedom, joy, self-expression, safety, and autonomy. All of this is done by actively engaging within and participating in our community. Our work expands across multiple demographics whose needs vary though the common thread is access to spaces that are safe, where individuals have the chance to be seen and accepted fully. Spaces where a fight for inherent and hereditary rights is not seen as radical but as an expression of what is necessary for our collective futures. Beyond that, we use mutual aid models to help members of our community meet needs that are often considered basic, but the wealth inequalities and inequities that exist make it difficult and sometimes impossible to meet alone.