Women’s Skateboarding
Girls Skate India was one of the first Brand level projects that I worked on at Vans. It’s a story centered around Atita Verghese, a skateboarder from Bangalore, India and her non-profit. For Atita, skateboarding was an empowering discovery: no rules, no coaches, just self expression. She would embrace that idea and use it to challenge gender norms in India. Her non-profit aimed to share the power of skateboarding with as many young women in India as possible through the skate clinics that she taught.
The film connects Atita and Lizzie Armanto, Vans team rider and one of the top women skateboarders as they host a workshop in Bangalore. The campaign included a series of global skateboarding workshops, and ended up getting thousands of women of all ages on skateboards for the first time. We built on that momentum the following year with the Vanguards film, profiling four young women skaters and expanding the workshops. This marked a culture shift at Vans where women’s skateboarding was no longer considered lesser than. Most importantly it established a new generation of women who have grown up seeing people that look like them represented in skate culture.
Directed by Natalia Leite, produced by Humble, edit by Mandy Brown at Postal. Photography by Anthony Acosta.
Vans Team:
Jamie Reilly, Sadia Noor, Micah Kawaguchi-Ailetcher, Lisamarie Gaulin.
Partners: (Vanguards)
Directed by Kai Regan, produced by AllDayEveryDay, edit by Jamie Foord and Zoe Mougin at Rock Paper Scissors. Photography by Anthony Acosta.
Vans Team:
Jamie Reilly, Erwin Federizo, Sadia Noor, Adam Nelson, George Hatton.