It might be where the cool kids come to hang out, but the Southbank Centre’s Undercroft Skate Space just turned 50.
This shadowy netherworld slinking beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall — fizzing with graffiti and soundtracked by the grind of polyurethane on concrete — marks its half century in 2026 (in insouciant skater style, there seems to be no exact anniversary), along with its epithet as the ‘birthplace of British skateboarding’.
It was just shy of a decade after the Higgs and Hill-built Queen Elizabeth Hall opened in 1967, that skaters cottoned onto the fact that the undercroft’s brutalist cocktail of ramps, ledges, walls and pillars made for a ready-made skatepark, in which they could pop flips and shove-its to their heart’s content.
Says Shane O’Brian, a skateboarder who first came to the incidental skatepark around 1976: “Everyone knows the Southbank around the world, it’s iconic. Back in the day, if someone asked if you were a ‘Southbanker’ you’d proudly say yes — you had that title, you had your belonging.
“I’m 60 years old, and I’m still a skater, I’m still here now. The Southbank skate space has shaped my life from a kid of 10 to 60, with a community that has lasted decades.”
To mark the milestone, an exhibition, Skate 50, launches on 30 April 2026, featuring documentary photographs and films of the undercroft in action through the decades, from the likes of Winstan Whitter, Dan Magee, Lev Tanju and the Keep Rolling Project — as well as contributions from sound artist Beatrice Dillon and animator Sofia Negri.
Says filmmaker and skateboarder Winstan Whitter, who led workshops bringing together the various generations of skaters: “The South Bank Undercroft offered me a space I could hold with my friends, to fully express myself growing up there as in my early teens to adulthood. It’s an extremely important space for young people, to have free spaces they can hold which is still echoed today and beyond.”
Skate 50, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 30 April-21 June 2026, pay what you want (suggested donation £8)
