GREATER THAN SKATERS

Cli­mate change, habi­tat de­struc­tion, loss of bio­di­ver­sity, ocean plas­tics, food in­se­cu­rity and the list goes on. What can one per­son do? That’s a ques­tion that John French has been ask­ing him­self for nearly four decades.

He moved to Spain over 10 years ago and says he has found an an­swer that came from a most un­likely place. John is an artist and teacher now based in Cat­alo­nia. He lives with his wife and two chil­dren in the Poble­nou neigh­bour­hood of Barcelona, which he calls “the street skat­ing cap­i­tal of the world.” He is co­or­di­na­tor of MOSS Foun­da­tion BCN and a board mem­ber of MOSS Foun­da­tion Aus­tralia.

John grew up in the 1970s in the east­ern sub­urbs of Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia’s sec­ond largest city. About 15 years ago, a group of skaters who are now in their 40s and 50s (but still skate­board­ing) would meet every week to ride the city’s new skateparks. It be­came known as MOSS or Mel­bourne Old School Skate Ses­sions. They had a water pro­ject in Africa and would use any money they made from events, com­pe­ti­tions or t-shirt sales to build in­stal­la­tions to col­lect rain­wa­ter for rural com­mu­ni­ties in Swazi­land, now known as Eswa­tini.

MOSS is a com­pletely vol­un­teer or­gan­i­sa­tion: no one gets paid and there are no over­heads, no of­fice or admin costs and 100% goes to the cause. It con­nects one com­mu­nity – that of skaters – with com­mu­ni­ties in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries by heed­ing their calls for sup­port. MOSS works to meet their basic need for safe drink­ing water by using the tal­ent and imag­i­na­tion of artists in Aus­tralia, Spain and be­yond. By pulling these strands to­gether, MOSS has funded over 25 water pro­jects.

John says: “Every few months I visit the local skate shops and col­lect old decks [the plank-like part that the skaters stand on] no mat­ter how trashed they are. I cycle home with 10 or so boards strapped to my bike rack and they are stored and re­cy­cled at the In­sti­tuto Barri Besos high school near La Mina in Barcelona. The school di­rec­tor Oscar Tar­rega has been fan­tas­ti­cally sup­port­ive. I have also en­coun­tered won­der­ful peo­ple like Wag­ner Gallo Ro­drigues from Al Car­rer skate shop who es­caped gang cul­ture in his na­tive Brazil through skate­board­ing and man­aged to make it to Eu­rope. He feels so in­debted to skat­ing that he is keen to put some­thing back. He helps out prepar­ing boards for the artists. Sara Mil­lan also plays an im­por­tant role li­ais­ing with the artists and de­liv­er­ing the decks.”

The process is this: the old skate­board decks that would oth­er­wise go to land­fill get re­stored in the school’s wood­work room. Usu­ally the decks are so trashed that they are cov­ered with a can­vas – this ma­te­r­ial is also re­cy­cled from the fold­ing sun shades from the city’s café ter­races – then, once cov­ered, or sanded, the decks are primed with gesso, la­belled and ready for the artists to use.

After the first BCN show last year at Urban Ad­dict, things are now set for a larger event open­ing on No­vem­ber 25 at Barcelona street art gallery, Base El­e­ments, in the Gothic Quar­ter. De­spite the 12 hour time dif­fer­ence, the Barcelona show will co­in­cide with the Mel­bourne ex­hi­bi­tion with decks spe­cially cre­ated by 150 in­ter­na­tional artists to be sold on­line using an app. Once the bid­ding starts it then takes part all around the world. Some decks will sell for as low as 90 euros while those crafted by more es­tab­lished names can sell for thou­sands of dol­lars.

A UN re­port listed MOSS as the prin­ci­pal or­gan­i­sa­tion sup­port­ing peo­ple in Swazi­land in their strug­gle to adapt to the cli­mate cri­sis. “So,” John says, “it seems that we’re doing some­thing right and that in it­self is em­pow­er­ing.”

MOSS are on Face­book, In­sta­gram and Linkedin @moss­foun­da­tionaskaters. They re­spond to all en­quiries.

(This ar­ti­cle was co-au­thored with John French.)