Creating Safe Spaces In Skateboarding

Skateboarding has been a huge part of Cheer Up Luv founder, Eliza’s life over the past couple of years. Enabling her to grow in confidence, develop her skillset and connect with a new community of friends through events and content that reaches a global audience.

As skating started to becoming an important part of her world, Eliza started to notice the intersections between the gender equality advocacy work with Cheer Up Luv, and the her own experiences of safety and access to public spaces when learning to skate.

Keen to encourage as many women and LGBTQ+ people to get into skateboarding as possible, Eliza decided to team up with Best Foot Forward Skate Academy to put on Cheer Up Luv’s first ever skate event for women and queer people in Hyde Park in 2023. The first event was attended by more than 60 people and was supported by Santa Cruz Skateboards, Jimmy's Iced Coffee and Superbon Chips.

Eliza followed up in March 2024 as part of Hysterical Collective's charity events showcase with Hysterical x Hop - a skate and sketch workshop at Hop Kingdom in aid of LGBTQ+ charity Galop during Women's History Month. This event also sold out and contributed to Hysterical raising £1k for Galop, it was supported by Santa Cruz, Crave, Salt of The Earth and Smol.

Following on from the success of the first two events, Cheer Up Luv teamed up again with Best Foot Forward with an even bigger event to mark Go Skate Day 2024. The event sold out in under 24 hours, was attended by 80 people and was supported by Route One, Santa Cruz, Jimmy's Iced Coffee, Proper, Snuggs, We Are In Action CIC, Clown Skateboards, Dalston's Drinks and Chrome Europe.