Diverse Bodies Rolling Together

Image credit: Indigo Willing

As part of the Moving Bodies Lab seminar series, we welcome academics and skateboarders Dr Indigo Willing (University of Sydney, Australia) and Dr Esther Sayers (Goldsmiths, UCL, UK), who will join us to discuss their ongoing research that combines approaches from education, sociology, co-design, and gender studies to highlight community-led change in the traditionally male-dominated world of skateboarding.

About the speakers

Indigo Willing is a war orphan, skateboarder and has a PhD in sociology. She is the co-chair of Skateistan International Advisory Board, who make skating and education accessible in partnership with local skate groups in over 22 countries from around the globe. Skateistan are also featured in a documentary which won an Academy Award in 2021. As a skateboarder she is involved with award-winning and internationally-recognized community initiatives such as the Queer-led Respect is Rad and its flagship campaign Consent is Rad, We Skate QLD and SSHRED network. Indigo is the creator of the Skate, Create, Educate and Regenerate (SkateCER) project at SSSHARC at The University of Sydney, and a NSW Winston Churchill Fellow. and John Oxley Library Hon. Fellow for her skate research. She is also the co-author of Skateboarding, Power and Change (Palgrave Macmillan 2023) with Anthony Pappalardo and art by Adam Abada.

Esther Sayers is Head of MA Arts and Learning at Goldsmiths, University of London. She developed her PhD research as a critique of the political rhetoric around inclusion in the arts. Her current enquiry into modes of participation, community building and peer to peer learning focusses on the cultural field of skateboarding. In 2015, she established with ArtScapers with CCI, a unique public art education programme for the University of Cambridge. Esther was Curator for Young People’s Programmes, Tate Modern (2002 – 2011). She co-founded City Mill Skate where, through community designed skate dots, a new skate space was built on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Esther skates regularly in East London and with the London Skate Mums. The experience of learning to skate alongside her children has been a significant influence on her use of embodied research methodologies.

This event is free to attend. The virtual link will be shared closer to the date.

This hybrid seminar is organised by The Moving Bodies Lab of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, led by Cassandra Phoenix.