Supporting youth advocacy to achieve positive campaign outcomes and change in heritage organisations

The campaign to retain the Southbank Centre’s ‘Undercroft’ as a place for skateboarders rather than retail cuts to the heart of heritage debates: what makes a space valuable and who gets to decide this? Ruiz’s research examined young people’s attachments to the Undercroft over its forty-year history.

The research created a newly collaborative relationship between the Long Live Southbank (LLSB) campaign and the Southbank Centre, resulting in the restoration of the Undercroft and the creation of a Children and Young People’s Centre. It informed a new grant programme for young people from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The research changed perceptions of heritage and skating, facilitating change for skater groups, and generated advocacy support and improved services for young people.