The skatepark design for Cory Park Tairua. Photo / TCDC
The skatepark design for Cory Park Tairua. Photo / TCDC
Three decades after the small coastal community of Tairua asked its Council for a skatepark, the current generation of young skaters and scooterers are getting a place to call their own.
"Our kids have a passion for scootering," says Rebecca Railton. "I see what a difference it makes for my kids.
"One of my son's anxiety is reduced so much from going to the skatepark and if it can help my child, it can help others."
Rebecca and husband Lawrence just donated $50,000 to the skatepark group in Tairua on the Coromandel.
Plans include a street skate section, bowl and landscaped grounds to be located at the end of Cory Park Domain, the only active recreation zone in town.
The skatepark design for Cory Park Tairua. Photo / TCDC
The couple own AS Colour, a clothing brand started after Lawrence's career in the skate industry and which now supplies quality clothing to the home of skateboarding, California, as well as to its online and retail stores throughout New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
They have a place in Tairua and had to ferry their twin 13-year-old boys Zach and Nathan to Pauanui's skate bowl for years.
"Being part of the Tairua community, we are in a position to give back and give that project a kickstart," says Lawrence.
"Skateparks are a great place for kids to meet other kids and break down barriers. It's a good physical sport, especially for kids who aren't into the traditional sports like rugby."
Rebecca says many of her kids' friendships are formed at the skatepark.
"One of our boys especially, he'll come back from the skatepark the chirpiest little thing. Our kids meet so many kids at the skatepark. Especially if you are not a naturally extroverted friend maker, it's really made a difference in our kids' lives."
Dr Craig Harrison is a postdoctoral research fellow at AUT and loves skateparks for reasons that may surprise.
He uses the skatepark as an analogy for learning and challenges other sporting codes to follow the example of the skatepark.
"I'm a big fan for a number of reasons."
His company Athlete Development Project helps young people learn and grow to realise their potential in sport, and in life.
"I truly believe that the skatepark is a great example of effective learning. The combination of no rules, meaningful feedback, inspirational role models, and stepped challenges that appropriately challenge each athlete individually, results in self-directed, intrinsically motivated, confident athletes who turn up day after day for more. Just because getting better feels good.
"Much of what the skatepark brings underlines lots of great learning pedagogy.
It's not just creating places for kids to go and skate, it's what skateparks embody for wider transfer to life.
He says a key characteristic of any successful athlete is that their motivation to train and improve should come from within. It's called intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic.
"Things get done simply for the sake of getting better at something as well as the satisfaction that doing so brings. Skateboarding is one of the best examples of this."
Easton Rowe-Smith at a skatepark in Bali. Photo / Supplied
Skatepark users demonstrate the ability to change and adapt, which is a big part of learning, he says.
"That environment facilitates lots of things that allow kids to be more adaptable and more resilient.
"The skatepark fuels positive interest. For kids of all ages, abilities and levels, there's always a tangible progression for them, because the 12-year-old will watch the 18-year-old and want to progress to their level, and the 8-year-old will learn from the 12-year-old."
Like the skills that Lawrence Railton used from his skateboarding years to build a successful brand, another skatepark attribute is risk taking.
The skater does a great job of framing risk as opportunities to learn, and does so from a place of self-determination, no coach, no shouting parent on the sideline.
"There's feedback from watching others, videoing each other and through smashing their face on the concrete if they've got it wrong without an adult telling them they've got it wrong!" says Dr Harrison.
"There's no one telling them what to do. The kids choose, and that's a much more powerful thing than I think a lot of adults really understand."
This level of choice leads to the type of motivation that will be around for the long term.
Freeman Rowe-Smith of Tairua at Whangamata's new skatepark. Photo / Alison Smith
Research also shows that youngsters in the Waikato want to be more physically active, but at age 15, many stop. For most that do, this becomes a lifelong trend.
Eight out of 10 people aged 12-17 years like to be physically active but the Waikato is still seeing a decline in participation.
"Twelve to 17-year-olds are the most at risk of all groups when it comes to getting and maintaining physical activity in their lives," says Bill Cooksley, Sport Waikato co-ordinator for Thames-Coromandel.
At this age, children head to secondary school, where the focus is on competitive sport.
The act of play - which has no other objective - declines.
Cooksley says partnerships need to be fostered between schools, clubs and councils, so young people can get active outside of secondary school.
"We need to encourage unstructured and loosely structured play.
We need to let our young people play on their own terms in their own time.
The new Marlborough Skatepark on Auckland's North Shore. Photo / Alison Smith
He told the Tairua-Pauanui Community Board that if your town does not have a skatepark, your town is a skatepark.
"Easily accessible, no cost to participate and right beside an open field space sounds like an ideal tonic to overcoming some of the barriers to participation," he said of the Cory Park site where where the Tairua community plans to build its skatepark.
However Tairua skatepark advocates have had an additional barrier, so powerful that these majority wishes have been overridden for three decades.
Whenever a skatepark facility is put on the work programme for the Tairua-Pauanui Community Board, lawyer's requests for information arrive at Thames-Coromandel District Council and the project gets dropped from priorities.
There are arguably many suitable sites for a well-designed and landscaped facility but only one that is now zoned - the Cory Park Domain in the middle of town.
Among supporters is the Cory Wright family.
Viv Cory-Wright - whose grandfather Harold Cory-Wright gifted the park land over 70 years ago - made a plea to councillors in early September.
"I want to know how the NIMBYs [Not In My Back Yard] and a handful of bach owners have had so much influence on TCDC's decisions on this project in the past.
"Who has the agenda that has let Tairua's kids be discriminated against? We have been left with absolutely nothing but the assumption that someone here has an agenda to stop this project," she said.
"If you live next to the Cory Park Domain, expect to hear people enjoying themselves at the Cory Park Domain. Skateboarding is now an Olympic sport. So these people need to move with the times, or just move," she told the full council meeting.
Cooksley says skateparks do not attract anti-social behaviour.
"It potentially reduces youth crime and anti-social behaviour."
And not all bach owners are against - far from it, as the Railtons' generous donation has proven.
The Skate Tairua Group has launched a $1k club for families and individuals to donate $1000 toward the minimum $150,000 that must be community fundraised to get the project built, but with AS Colour's $50,000 donation and numerous pledges even prior to the official fundraising launch, believe we will get there at last.
