So this is your second video release after ‘As If, And What’. How has the making of this one differed from the first?

I guess I had more of an idea this time around of what would be involved. I was a bit more organised in downloading and cataloguing the clips straight away instead of leaving it to do all in one go like last time (most boring 3 months of my life!!). Otherwise it’s been pretty similar to the last one; just a few more broken people this time.

From the viewpoint of both a filmer and a skateboarder, how has the UK women’s scene changed in the intervening time?

It’s become much more prominent I think mainly due to social media – it offered a platform for us to do our own thing and not have to rely on others for exposure. Before you’d see snippets of footage here and there but now you can see clips daily of different riders. There are websites like Girl Skate UK that have grown in stature over the last few years, bringing together the community of UK female skateboarding as a whole.

There are also many more female only skate nights and comps being organised up and down the country.

Do you see female skateboarding as always existing outside of ‘skateboarding’ as a whole, as in with separate events and female-specific videos such as yours?

No, not at all. There are companies like Lovenskate, Animal and Nike who have all put out videos with parts of the men and women on their teams.

The reason I started the Girl Skate Jam was from personal experience of being thrown into comps like the Urban Games and Queen of Street and being scared shitless – most of us [the Gallaz Team] were entered into these huge events never having experienced even a small scale comp before. I wanted to create an event that offered a less pressured atmosphere. As it came about at a time before social media was even around, it was also a place where women could come and meet up and get to know other female riders (for the first 3 years of skating I only ever met one other girl.) Plenty of riders I know these days enter mixed comps as well – it’s just there to offer an alternative.

You don’t ‘need’ a gender specific video but it does tend to get more hype for the female riders overall and hopefully inspire others to do the same. I think the question that’s been creeping into my head recently is do you need full-length skate films anymore now that so many clips are put out online. Some of the younger riders I’ve worked with couldn’t understand why I asked them not to Instagram their clips and wait until the film was out – ha, it’s a fast changing world!

What are your thoughts on the Women’s Street League division this year? And in fact on Street League as a whole, as someone who has been around to see these kind of events grow to the size they are in such a short space of time?

Street League for me isn’t what I think of as skating so I’ve never tended to watch it. I did however catch the inaugural female event, and although the skating was good, it felt a bit sterile on the whole and some of the riders who usually perform well at other big events like the X-Games, you could see this was just a different kettle of fish altogether so they didn’t land their tricks. I also wasn’t completely convinced by the judging either. My idea of a comp is a rider going for their tricks, trying again and again until they get it whilst everyone watching is shouting and banging their boards for encouragement and going crazy when they land it; with this event, I didn’t feel had that type of atmosphere.

On the other hand for the riders who do get a chance to compete and make a living from what they love doing then of course it’s a good thing for them and it can only raise the profile of female skaters still further.

How did the inception of Rogue Skateboards come about?

In the early 2000 I was riding for Gallaz (women’s division of Globe) along with Lucy Adams and Laura Goh, I’d also just started up the Girl Skate Jam with Ro Brannon. At the time there was little exposure given to women, the coverage we did receive tended to be from health and fitness or lifestyle publications. They weren’t interested as you can imagine in covering what we were doing as skaters but more focused on how many calories you could burn. We also noticed that a lot of younger female riders dropped out when they hit their teens because of this lack of coverage/role models and general teenage pressures.

It got frustrating to see all of these good riders out there who weren’t receiving decent coverage in the way that the guys were (apart from Lucy who was kind of holding the torch for all female riders in the mags!). So my thought was to put a team together, start organising meets up around the country every month, go on tours, be present as a group at the Girl Skate Jam and the coverage came from that.  Hopefully the riders would also become the role models to keep the younger generation involved.

Did many group trips happen while filming for this one, or do you prefer to shoot skaters in their local area?

We’ve had a fair few London meet ups with different groups but generally I wanted to shoot the riders in their own environment. Georgie has been on most of the trips acting as the Shia Lebeouf, ‘JUST DO IT’ type of encouragement for the ladies. Julia likes a good punch if she’s wussing out of a trick; I’m apparently too feeble, so Georgie was pretty useful there too.

It’s been interesting to see the different terrains people skate, what we’d consider a pretty rubbish floor, Sabine who lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere thinks the ridged cheese grater concrete is a pretty normal surface to skate – and she does it well. This is really what I wanted to capture.

Was it tough finding time to skate yourself, around filming/editing duties?

I haven’t really skated for the last year. I’m running a photography business at the same time as doing this and got married in September so it’s been pretty full on. I’m looking forward to getting back on my board next year, even if it just involves a 3 foot mini!