When I was 18 years old, I found myself in the most prestigious boardroom i’d ever enter.
A few weeks earlier, I was sitting at Kuraby Skatepark, dangling my legs into the bowl saying, "We should start a petition to get the skatepark upgraded." I crafted a petition online, shared it with other locals, and it somehow caught the attention of our towns local newspaper. They wanted to meet with the teenagers who were petitioning the council to upgrade skateparks and went on to publish an article about our mission in the newspaper.
This attracted the attention of the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, who invited me to meet with him and further discuss our demands.
I explained how important skateparks were to my friends and me, and how this was our community and identity. I expressed how desperate we were to see the park reinvigorated.
He was enthusiastic and eager to please. Eventually, he made it clear that he wanted to do more than help us fix our skatepark. He started talking about skate competitions and workshops, referring to it as a Youth Activation Project.
At this point, I was freaking out, thinking, "I'm just some random skater trying to get my park upgraded." But I went along with it anyway. We sat there, scheming up a multi-month program of hip-hop writing and recording workshops to engage the local youth, as well as a Skate and Scooter Competition.
They'd provide the funds and connect us with a local Youth Center, which helped facilitate things like sound systems and first aid. We were in charge of creating the curriculum and running the workshops, as well as planning, marketing, organising, and running the Skate and Scooter competition.
As a high school dropout with zero qualifications, I'd somehow been appointed Event Coordinator of a large-scale city council youth initiative. Pretty wild!
This is where Scootering comes in.
Up until this point, I'd been a die-hard skater my whole life.
My life revolved around skateboarding, graffiti, and hip-hop - in that order.
I'd ridden friends' scooters at the local park and thought they were incredibly fun, but I'd never owned one that was actually strong enough to do tricks on.
But now that I was in charge of organising a scooter competition it was my job to find a scooter brand to sponsor the event and contribute to the prizes.
In doing so, I was exposed to a much more legitimate form of freestyle scootering than what Id ever seen. While it seemed like every second scooter rider could backflip that wasn't what impressed me; it was the way they’d grind on ledges and the rails that made scootering look like the most fun I'd ever seen.
Once i tried it, I was hooked. I knew straight away that i would find a way to make this my life.
Finding Freedom is meant to be read in the following order:
Petition, Dedication, Conviction, Exodus, Competition,
Treason, Funding, Physical, Virtual, Exponential.