Long Live Southbank

Long Live Southbank is the official non-profit organisation set up to preserve and maintain London’s unique and world renowned Southbank Undercroft, and to represent its diverse creative community of skateboarders, BMXers, visual artists and everyone else.
LLSB was started by local skateboarders in 2013 to give us a voice and raise awareness of yet another threat of the destruction of a creative community who turned a dead space into a thriving visual hub which has existed and evolved for over 40 years. The group now has upwards of 150,000 members from all walks of life, art forms and social backgrounds.
In early March 2013, The Southbank Centre unveiled designs for a £120 million redevelopment of its ‘Festival Wing’ that revealed their plan to transform the iconic Southbank Undercroft skate spot into retail units. The Southbank Centre proposed to relocate the community further down the river, beneath the Hungerford Bridge, and build a new (unwanted) skate facility there.
However, the Undercroft is a treasured space, revered as the birthplace of British skateboarding and has been home to skateboarders, BMX riders and graffiti artists for the last 5 decades. This makes the Southbank undercroft the oldest recognised and still existing skateboarding space in the world. The Southbank Centre’s proposal for the redevelopment site was not only not wanted but deemed contrived, fake, restrictive, controlled and contained none of the original features, no history, no support from the skate scene and would lack the unique, dynamic architecture that has made the Undercroft a globally renowned street culture space. The proposed new development was a massive expense and gamble and would have seen the destruction of the resident Undercroft community and its culture. A price too big to pay.
Our campaign, Long Live Southbank, is dedicated to protecting the Undercroft in its current form. We know its cultural and historical status to be irreplaceable and that its unique architecture and the vitality of the thriving community should be present for future generations.

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