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It is my pleasure to announce that this year Mission Dolores will be starting its own Skateboard Club– Shred Francisco.
Shred Francisco will be a predominantly student-run project for 5th through 8th graders aimed at integrating arts and sports in to community development.
The first component of the project will consist of a board-painting workshop. Students will pay an initial fee for their blank skateboard deck ($15). They will then spend about a month first planning their design and then painting their skateboard. We also aim to have local artists participate in the workshops to give the kids inspiration and teach them fundamentals of painting.
With their self-designed skateboard deck, the children can then choose either to keep their deck for themselves, or sell the deck through the school and local skate shops. With the proceeds from their sales, the kids can use the money to sustain the club and buy other necessities i.e. pads, helmets, other skateboarding accessories.
We then hope to begin the actual skateboarding lessons after winter break. This will include weekly tutorials on skateboarding fundamentals in the school playground. For these the children will be supervised, and knee and elbow pads along with helmets will be required.
Shred Francisco aims to dispel the negative stereotypes that are often associated with skateboarders. Through the process children will not only learn how to paint and how to skateboard, but how their passions can be transformed in to concrete works – both artistic and, hopefully, profitable.
