Story Skate Camp - 2021

During the summer of 2021 Story Skate Camp kicked off yet again, this time at the very welcoming Camp Hillcrest! In the edit below put together by Josh Hallett you’ll see everyone shredding Hillcrest, Cardiff Skate Plaza, Spit & Sawdust, Cirencester, Monmouth and taking a visit to the see the lovely folk at Decimal! As usual we can’t big up everyone enough who made this happen. Story Skate Camp’s founder: Mark Baines tells us more below.

Follow Story Skate Camp here and visit their website here.

Words by: Mark Baines

Photography by: Ash Wilson

Videography by: Josh Hallett

We started doing the skate camps in 2011 and the first location was Truro in Cornwall, an amazing location with a sick park. We had a good few years there until we decided we needed to change things up a little bit. We’d already started doing camps in Hull as well, where we would skate Rockcity skatepark and stay in an old Friary which was incredible. Then we got a call from Tom Seaton who owns Hillcrest asking if we would like to use the accommodation and on site park for our camps, which we chose to do. We currently only offer camps at this location for 2-3 weeks in the summer.

The idea for the camp came from when I rode for WeSC in Sweden, my friend Ricky Sandstrom worked for them and he was doing summer camps under the name Camp WeSC. I went out there to help out over a period of a few years and got to see how Ricky and Mark did things over there. It gave me the idea to do it over here in the UK. I started it under the WeSC name as well but eventually changed it to Story Skate Camp when WeSC stepped away from skateboarding. We copied the idea initially from what Ricky did in Sweden but it has morphed into something slightly different over the years.

We almost treat the camp as a skate trip where we take the kids to different parks throughout the week and skate and film at each place. They get to shoot photos with the legend Ash Wilson and film with top filmers like Josh Hallett. They get a little taste of what it’s like being on a skate trip or a tour. They get to skate with guys like Dale Starkie, Calvin Ligono, Seb Batty and Jeremy Jones to name a few. In the past we have had Tom Knox, Danny Brady, Nick Jensen and even Chris Haslam join us, so it’s a rad experience for kids meeting and skating with these guys.

We are working on the dates for next year but we should have three separate weeks available and you can register over at storyskatecamp.com and follow on Instagram @storyskatecamp for updates for 2022.