WELCOME 2022 WRAP-UP

WELCOME WRAP 2022

In a recent article for FREE magazine Ben Powell wrote about an Emerica Video from a UK tour that took place last year, in it he mentioned a 'very active local skater-owned-shop’, it turns out the shop he was referring to was us! So, we decided to take a look back at what we did actually do over the last year and as usual he was right, we have been pretty active.

Call it braggadocio, ball-bagging, showing off, or any other synonym for blowing your own trumpet, here it is - our Top 10 of the good shit we did in 2022. Inevitably, limiting it to 10 means missing some good stuff out, but these are our highlights of things that we did (along with the good people out there in skate-industry land). The blogging equivalent of a years worth of instagram selfies, enjoy.

LEEDS HYDE PARK WOMEN+ FC. The year kicked off(lol) with our friends at Hyde Park Women+ Football Club, after getting all of their gear stolen from their lock-up and a long period without a kit sponsor we teamed up with Nike to produce their current colours. It may not have been the obvious thing for a skate shop to get involved with but Hyde Park is a big part of what we do and HPWFC are a part of that community too, plus for a minute we could pretend we were Palace.

Photo by Erin Cooper-Jones

BEER. One of our longtime friends Northern Monk hit us up to put together a beer as part of their Patrons Project. We asked if we could do two and challenged them to make two versions of the same pale ale - one with alcohol and one without, simply because some of us drink and some of us don’t.

SKATESHOP DAY. Teaming up is one thing but this Avengers Assemble/Voltron style mega-collab took it to the next level. With a little help from the good folk who organise Skate Shop Day we coordinated 46 bricks and mortar stores to come together for the UK's first Skate Shop Day collaboration t-shirt. An NBD and most likely a NTBDA unless some brands and distributors decide to step up and start putting the effort in. Shout out to all the independent skate shops out there.

JOBS IN SKATEBOARDING. In an attempt to demystify the ‘industry’ we set about interviewing some of the people who work in it. A motley crew of ex-pros, snowboarders, graduates, grifters and autodidacts who do everything from packing boxes to designing the shoes that go in them. We’ve covered almost 20 roles so far and the plan is to keep rolling them out, gathering and sharing the intel for the next generations. At some point someone will probably copy this idea and do it better but in the meantime you can view the full collection HERE.

WELCOME 2 : HELL. Our second full-length video felt like the first major event since forever. 67% of commenters on the Thrasher instagram post about it agreed that Hallett and the team smashed it. Watch it HERE.

HYDE PARK BOOK CLUB x WELCOME POP UP. Hyde Park Book Club has become something of a mainstay for skateboarders in LS6, offering up good veggie food, banging coffee and a clean toilet. In August they hosted us for a month long pop-up shop which began with a Vague Magazine launch party and ended with the Vans Shop Riot afterparty, the in-between featured some workshops, collaborations with Spanky and Liisa Chisholm, a pub quiz, and a gig with Serious Sam and former SOTY Leo Romero.

NAIDAN & LOGAN. We added a couple of next generation rippers to the squad, it's safe to say Leeds skateboarding is in good hands with these two Greggs raiders out there slaughtering spots on the daily. We quickly set about putting their boundless energy and enthusiasm to work, testing out some budget hardware, watch the video HERE.

SCREW GALLERY X FRENCH. We wanted to do something with our pals at Screw for a while, so we decided to employ the services of the closest thing the UK has to a skateboarding-artist-superstar Richard ‘French’ Sayer to finally make that happen. French drew us a graphic and put on an art show, Screw hosted, we made some one-off merch pieces and a good time was had by all. Screw Welcome forever .

HUF / HOMESTART. This was a tough one, bringing equal parts joy and heartbreak. To enter the raffle to buy the Nike SB Dunks celebrating the life of the sadly departed skateboarding legend Keith Hufnagel we asked participants to bring in toys to donate to Leeds based charity Home Start for them to gift to disadvantaged kids at Christmas. The response from the skate and sneaker communities was overwhelming and we were stoked to be able to help so many families at a difficult time of year, but it’s pretty fucked up that in one of the richest nations on earth we still have so many kids living in poverty.

INTERVIEWS. Trying our hardest to stay on top of the forever shifting cultural zeitgeist of skateboarding we sat down(in front of a computer) and talked with UK skate scene stalwarts such as Dan Magee and John Rattray as well as rising global icons like Dave Mull of Worble infamy. Read the creatively edited results of our conversations HERE.

Thank you.