An Interview with Kas Wauters – Skate Boss and 7Hills Programme Manager

T: So… here we are I guess?! It took a while for us to prepare ourselves for it and a couple reschedules on either side, but errrm... Yeah, here we go!  To start things off, it makes sense to ask what your role at 7Hills Skatepark is? And how you got involved with the park? 

K: Well, Where to begin? I call myself the Programme Director at 7Hills Skatepark, and I got involved through my Masters studies in 2016. I was studying Cultural and Social Pedagogy in Belgium where we had to do an internship and I had the idea to reach out to skate organisations who combined my studies with skateboarding. I emailed a bunch of organisations but back then I think there were not as many skating organisations as now, but a few of the big ones were already around… Skateistan, Make Life Skate Life and I think SkatePal as well. 

T: Ah yes, I imagine that would have been early days for SkatePal with their park in Asira? 

K: Yeah for sure! Anyhow, I got a response from Arne who was running Make Life Skate Life who was also living in Belgium. He was saying how a few skateparks had been built by Make Life Skate Life, but a programme needed to be set up at the park and back then it was a choice between India or Jordan. So yeah, I really had no clue what Jordan was like, no idea whatsoever but things turned out best for me to go to Jordan so I based my internship around working with a focus on the most vulnerable youth groups in Amman with a skate programme at 7Hills. 

Me and my girlfriend moved to Jordan at the end of 2016 where the park had been already built for 2 years but Arne was mentioning that when the park was built it was really active in the beginning, but he felt that not too many kids were still showing up, so the idea was to reactivate skateboarding courses to get the park busy. 

I then met Mo for the first time who was there from the start with the build and was the founder of Philadelphia Skateboards. They had tried to do classes before but they were pretty much on onhold at that point with a local NGO occasionally hosting classes. For me it was kinda crazy, I was totally independent with the internship at this point. Arne was kind of my mentor but he was in Belgium at the time and I just started working together with Mo building the programme reaching out to other youth programmes and local NGOs to get classes running. And of course, spending a lot of time at the park just to be around to get to know everyone and running a few sessions on my own. 

After four months we managed to start a few classes: the Sudanese Class was started back then and the Girls Only Class too. It was going pretty well but I had to go back to Belgium to write my thesis so I left them in Jordan after a few months but it always felt that it was, ermmm… that my job wasn’t finished back then. I had to go back to finish my studies but it wasn’t like I had finished my internship and I was done, we had only just started and it was growing still. 

I graduated and kept going back to Jordan whenever I could. In the beginning it was like, I work in Belgium, get some money, go to Jordan to run the sessions and when I was broke, I had to return to Belgium to get some more money and do it all over again! This was a going on for about three years, it became a job but it was totally voluntary and yeah, we were slowly growing over this time and we started looking at getting 7Hills a registered organisation and all that stuff. Since a year-and-a-half we have been a Jordanian non-profit which was a hustle! The registration, the money, finding a lawyer… it was so time consuming, but we had some grants come through that helped us start up as an organisation which was a massive step for us to make it happen. 

Before we were an organisation but an informal one, our decision was to be like “let’s not invest our money in the paperwork otherwise we’d have to quit the classes and stop paying for kids to get to the skatepark.” But with help from some grants we could do both, become registered and keep bringing kids to the park and once you become a recognised NGO your chances of receiving more grants become a lot easier.

 So yeah, this is kind of how I rolled in there haha!

T: Yeah! There are so many crazy and interesting things about that story, the whole not investing in paperwork when you’re running as a grassroots informal organisation, but focusing on the core values of what you want to do on the ground with people is tough decision to make and gets super hard when your in that mode of working really hard 6 months of the year back home to then pay for you to effectively volunteer the other 6 months in Jordan. Complete hats off to the organisations who are able to support the start-up charities to get registered and really get things going, it’s from those points shit starts getting real!

 And yeah, hahaha… trying to deal with all that Jordanian bureaucracy! 

K: Hahaha, yeah man you know! 

T: Exactly, just to get passed that is such an achievement in itself. I find it so crazy as well, imagining what you said about the skatepark before 2016 without the programme being there as well, and how it wasn’t being used that much. And then you see it today, fast forward 4 years later and it really is a kingpin of activity in Amman. Whenever I’m in Jordan and want something to do I just go to 7Hills and people are there hanging out ready to do something, and it really has become that institution within just four years which is crazy. What do you think about 7Hills specifically and how it is run that has facilitated that transformation over that time?

 K: So… where to start for this?! By building a skatepark you build a community and by working with this community you feel that there is a need for more, especially after living a bit longer in Jordan you become aware that there is no public spaces at all. I mean, 7Hills is one of the only public parks in Jordan where you can just go and hang out without a guard being there watching you all the time, and there is so many young people in the city, I think about 60% are 30 years old or younger. And all these people don’t have a proper place just to hangout, or outlets and tools to just express themselves. And, at the same time there are a lot of creative people but a scarcity of tools and places to do something with this creativity. And so, by building the park and doing the classes we thought “ok, so why don’t we develop this space more but through baby steps?” 

We started doing small stuff and to see what was working and then moved onto bigger things, for example the basketball court that was built is crazy what a success it is! It’s used from morning to evening by everyone; boys, girls, young men, even the old guys are coming to ball ha! But yeah, through skateboarding we can build this mentality with young people to interact in a nice way and especially in Jordan there are very few opportunities to do this, especially say between boys and girls where they will be usually separated during school and will spend a lot of their time with families. 

By using skateboarding kids can finally do these things and with parents it sort of covers that issue of bringing boys and girls together because the focus is on something different. There’s always a focus on gender, from the beginning we tell every new partner organisation who brings classes to us for 50% boys and 50% girls, and then we aim to bring the parents to the park as well. We hear these horror stories of life in Jordan when you’re not from here. With the Sudanese families they tell us how kids get bullied out of school and being in public can be difficult because of racism, so for us it was really important to involve the parents with these classes so we can provide a public space where families can relax and just feel welcome. 

It’s pretty crazy now, the park has become a community space for the entire Sudanese Community in Amman, it’s like, their meeting spot for the whole community and it’s so nice to see! The parents come out when the kids skate to have picnics and it has also become a place for them to interact with Jordanian families too. We really push equality at the park, I mean it’s something that totally part of skateboarding but you know we really push it. I mean, in the beginning the local kids were total badasses, the park wasn’t the nicest place to be at the start, broken glass everywhere and kids really fucking around. But, by working for years with these kids they have taken over that mentality and now really respect the space and eachother.

T: Totally! Like, when you’re there the kids still have that badassness about themselves, but then they have that respect of the space too. 

K: Yeah. At the start the kids had never had an opportunity to say, interact with a child from Sudan. But through skateboarding you break down this whole thing, and especially because these classes come every week so slowly we got everyone to respect each other and everyone. It’s very rare for people to say bad stuff about 7Hills and skateboarding in Amman. This happened only once actually, when Hakiem’s father came down to tell us he needs to study and I’m like “yeah of course he has to study, I’ve been telling him this as well not like I’ve been saying ‘Yo Hakiem, quit your books and come skate all the time!’” 

T: Hahaha… Hakiem wishes! But it shows the park isn’t just about skateboarding, but families come down to hang out and people who work there have become mentors for the younger skaters, there are so many different levels of learning going on. And the parents are coming down learning about how the kids interact with stuff like boys and girls playing and skating together without any problems. So much exchange of information going on at 7Hills…

 K: … yeah, it is one of the only places in the city where you see people coming together and having a good time no matter where they’re from and what’s their story! The city is not creating these spaces, so how could people interact in a nice way if there are no spaces or opportunities to do so?! I guess downtown you see a healthy mix of the city but even there it can be pretty conservative you know? 

T: Yeah I guess, but there’s a different thing going on in Downtown 

K: Sure, so through this we kind of realised our bigger mission is create public spaces and we can do this through skateboarding. It’s like, skateboarding is the seed to grow a community, and from this community you can build stuff and develop these public spaces bottom-up. And by working with the community you can really look into what these people want and need, and from this you can really start developing a public space! 

And the government? I think they have started to respect us, so who knows? The plan is to be able to continue doing this elsewhere in Jordan. We were going to start building a new park, but plans are on hold because of this Covid-19 thing! But you know, using the same method as before: building a skatepark, creating a community and then developing a new public space for positive interaction. Now, at 7Hills we are going to build a b-boy arena…

T: A what?! 

K: A b-boy arena… you know? Breakdancing!

 T: Ohhhh, very nice… 

K: Yep, back in the days at the start skateboarding in Jordan started in the streets alongside breakdancing where people would hang out and skate and dance together. But, they never really got a proper space to practice, but they come often to the park and it’s a similar thing to skating, a really cool subculture where people dance together. So now, we are in touch with them where we can build a flat piece with them at the park where they agree to also run a weekly breakdancing programme for local kids and those who come via bus. And now it’s the same with graffiti guys, we are really trying to find these nice things to do with a good culture around them to bring people together in Amman. 

T: Ah that’s so nice to hear. That the park is still tracing its routes back to where it began with the b-boys, totally rad! It goes to show that 7Hills is way more than just a skatepark, and it has these other things going on. You’ll be there one evening then all of a sudden loads of people turn up and you’re like “Hang on what’s going on now?” and then people will just start breakdancing and stuff like that. So what else is going at the park? Who else are you collaborating with? 

K: So yeah, the basketball court and b-boys sort of happen spontaneously, and now we are looking to do more structured and new stuff through the users of the park. We’ve started looking at doing more gardening stuff at the park, and we asked a Youth Leader called Asem who was really into doing planting and all that stuff. Because he liked it, we tried to push him to take ownership of the project to make some planting boxes here, and a garden there. This whole Youth Leadership Programme we have here isn’t about teaching skateboarding skills, it’s part of it of course, but we want to develop a sense of ownership for the Programme. 

Asem for example, wasn’t great at taking responsibility of the skateboarding lessons because you know, he was kind of shy and he didn’t like talking to groups which you really felt. So we said “alright, what are you into? What would you like to do?” and he was really into plants and gardening so we said “ok, you take care of the park” and that’s the same as running lessons and he gets the same rewards in doing that. So yeah, we just learn what people like doing and they learn about contributing to 7Hills and getting something in return… usually skateboards! 

It is the same with photography as well. Ghaith has gotten really into photography recently and has gotten really good at it… 

T: …Yeah I’ve noticed on Instagram recently, everyone is stepping up their game!

 K: Yep, these organised workshops for analog photography and photo development, and just all the time trying to look for creative activities to bring to these kids because there are very few opportunities to discover their creativity. Photography, video editing, social media… it is really important for these kids to use these tools to tell their story. This is why we are now developing our Arts Programme at the park, collaborating with local artists where they can show the kids what they do through workshops to inspire the kids. 

T: So, would you say this Arts Programme is the future for 7Hills? 

K: It’s something we started with a few workshops, digital animation, photography and design your own board. It’s stuff that these kids would never otherwise have an opportunity to try be it at home or school. So I think it’s cool that we can introduce these things to young people

T: Totally, being able to engage in something like digital animation as a Sudanese refugee family living in Amman would be miniscule. But, 7Hills is able to host a safe space and act to reach out to other great people and organisations in Amman within scenes associated with skateboarding to really inspire these kids 

K: It’s all there within skateboarding… filming is there, photography is there, graphic design is there. I mean, it is all so attached and it perfectly fits under the Arts Programme. 

T: I think what I have noticed with 7Hills compared to other skating NGOs is that your Youth Leadership Programme is distinctly different and the role of international volunteers in this too…