A project is underway to fund free skateboards amid fears that disadvantaged children will be excluded from a new £1 million park.
Construction is expected to start on the site at a former crazy golf course in Cliftonville, Margate, in October.
Now, a fundraising bid has been launched, including a charity art show, to provide 100 free skateboards and tuition.
Matt Shoul – a local resident who is spearheading the project named Skateboarding Unlimited UK (SUUK), said: “Cliftonville is ranked in the top 10 most impoverished neighbourhoods in the UK.
“To encourage and facilitate access to the forthcoming £1 million skate park, being built literally right on the doorsteps of children and young people who’d otherwise risk exclusion from this fantastic new sports facility without proactive engagement, we want to fund a free skateboard and all necessary safety equipment for 100 children a year, every year.
“This community youth project involves children assembling their own skateboards at the skate park and receiving free skateboarding tuition.
“Without such a scheme, it’s highly unlikely local children and young people would engage in an unknown sports activity at a state-of-the-art skate facility.”
A local company, which helped push the funding of the skatepark, Skate Pharm, will supply the boards.
A crowdfunder has also been set up for the project, and has a £6,000 target.
Describing the area as “severely poverty stricken”, Mr Shoul added: “The local youth have virtually no youth services and no after-school activities.
“This program aims to provide all the incentives necessary to maximise local youth involvement in a healthy, social sport.
“This is an area which currently offers negligible community participation opportunities for those disenfranchised families living well below the poverty line in notoriously substandard accommodation.”
The art show will be held at Margate’s Joseph Wales Studio and will feature sculptures from Mr Shoul and work from his brother Asa, who has worked on projects such as The Crown and Mission Impossible, and has made film posters for Quentin Tarantino.
It will run from August 27 to September 1, 11am to 6pm.
When the now-derelict Little Oasis golf course shut, local residents set up a makeshift skate park on the land.
But in 2014, Thanet District Council deemed it unsafe and demolished it.
This led to calls for a permanent site, with Tracey Emin pledging £100,000 to the scheme.
