‘She’s not just pretty skating, she actually can shred.’ - Meet Cumbria CvVen

Exploring the Cumbrian Skate Scene, Episode 2: Cumbria CvVen

This week, we bring to you the second episode of ‘Exploring the Cumbrian Skate Scene’ featuring the Cumbria-based inclusive women’s skate collective, Cumbria CvVen.

We caught up with the original founding members of the collective, Lilly and Chloe to have a craic about the reasons they set up the CvVen, the support they’ve had from the Cumbrian skating community, and what skating means to them.

The CvVen originally started out as a group chat, that eventually progressed into what it is today, with an Instagram page, hosting skate meet-ups and CvVen members using their hashtag, #cumbriacvven to share their skate videos.

‘We were just like, should we just start a skate group? There’s like no skate scene around here. It started out as a group chat, and it just went from there.’ - Lilly

‘Because the Barrer Cvlt are here and they’re the male group, we thought we could spin off them but we also wanted to be independent so we thought, they’re a cult, so we could be a coven because it’s mainly to do with witches and females.’ – Chloe

Both Chloe and Lilly also feel it is important to have female spaces in the skate scene, that remain inclusive (so anyone of any gender can skate with the CvVen) but can equally provide a safe space that isn’t overwhelming for women, due to skateboarding being a male-dominated sport.

‘It is a male-dominated sport, but I think with the Olympics and seeing so many new girl skaters and a lot of girl skaters going pro, it’s been great, we still are outnumbered massively in the skate scene, but I feel like there’s not as much to prove anymore because we’ve got female skaters doing better than some of the lads.’ – Lilly

‘It’s not going to be a male-dominated sport for much longer, there’s already more people to inspire younger girls and women.’’ – Chloe

‘It’s like, she’s not just pretty skating, she can actually shred.’ – Lilly

For the Chloe and Lilly, seeing the impact the CvVen has is one of the driving forces behind their desire to keep developing the collective.

‘It sounds really cringy, but how we’ve changed how people see girls skating around here and how you see girls getting excited like, we’ll be teaching someone a trick and we’ll look at each other like, they’re getting really excited and hyped about it and they’ll be like ‘I’ve got a clip can I put it on the page’ and we’re like, yeah, please! It’s such a humble feeling that we started off just us skating together and now we’ve actually got a skate group behind us, it’s crazy.’ - Lilly

‘I want people to see that these girls that started on basics last year have come this far and, to see the progression we’re making, that us females can do it just as well and I just want to prove to myself that this is something I can keep progressing at no matter what.' - Chloe

You can follow the CvVen here to keep up with them and get involved.