I saw the photos of Skate Biladi on Facebook and had to check into it for myself…nice work all the team involved with this awesome and innovative project.

Press Release

Jan 19th: Tashkeel and Fn Designs collaborate to create the 2nd edition of Fakie: A skateboard deck art exposition featuring 30 UAE based artists creating artwork out of old skateboards. In conjunction with the Fakie exposition Tashkeel has teamed up with Bradley Kirr to create a unique skateboarding environment featuring some of the best professional skateboarders and local amateurs riding the world’s first Arabic Caligraphy skateboard ramp artfully adorned by the famous street artist Amartey Golding from Showcase Gallery.

Workshops: Following the opening of Fakie on the 19th Tashkeel has teamed up with Surf Dubai to conduct a series of workshops every saturday incorporating surfing, skateboarding, and art to the youth population. Besides learning how to skate the ramp and surf the waves they will learn various design skills by creating their own skateboard, graffiti painting a car, and editing their own skate videos.

Feb 17th: To conclude the month of skate/surf/art activities we will conduct the 2nd edition of Skate Biladi (skate my country) to be called Skate Biladi 2.0: A social media skateboard experiment. This event is an extension of the dream of 13 year old Omar Al Abbar to create an event that brings skateboarding culture to the youth of his native Dubai. With the 2nd edition we took the original event concept held at Mamzar Park (where judges evaluate a skaters performance) and basically transformed the traditional skate contest format and created a platform that incorporates technology and social media native to the youth (BBM, Facebook, etc) whereby the skaters and audience are all complicit in the event outcome. Everybody (hopefully) will take photos using their smartphone (blackberry, iphone, android), upload them to Facebook, tag the person skateboarding as well as Tashkeelhub, and accumulate “likes” based on those photos throughout the night. The accumulated “likes”, along with the photos, will be displayed in real time on screens surrounding the Tashkeel Art Ramp so skaters can see their ranking and adjust their performance and interaction with the photographers to increase their “likes.” The skaters with the most “likes” at the end of the night, as well as the photographers who get the most “likes” for their photos, will be awarded prizes.