Alchemy Skateboarding brings positive momentum and community to Pierce County youth

written by Daniel O’Neil | photography by Jason Redmond

When Alchemy Skateboarding got rolling back in 2011, skateboarding was still illegal in downtown Tacoma. But skaters don’t sit around and wait for others to accommodate them, so Alchemy co-founder Ben Warner worked with the city and had the ban lifted. Soon enough, Alchemy was providing youth services to Pierce County’s juvenile detention program and to after-school programs, while also supporting a positive sense of community. Through Alchemy, skateboarding today gives back more than its weight in gold.

With this momentum, the team at Alchemy designed a nonprofit based around an indoor skate park with skatebased programming to create alternative pathways for young people to succeed. Skateboard deck manufacturing, graphic design and screen printing, and a retail shop offer real-life skills to participating youth. Conflict resolution and social-emotional learning opportunities are also transmitted while youth engage in these activities and while they go skate together.

“The whole goal is to identify the interests and the passion, and to use that spark to connect them to academic success or career pathways,” said Alchemy’s executive director, Taylor Woodruff. “So we really try to explore all those peripheral opportunities to build those skills so that the young people coming through the programs realize that the thing they’ve been doing for years is actually really building into something they can leverage.”

Participants come from a variety of ages and backgrounds as diverse as skate tricks. Besides skaters who pay to access Alchemy’s indoor park, one of only a handful in all of Washington, contracts with entities like the Pierce County juvenile court system bring more youth into skateboarding’s embrace. Positive youth development programs, or opportunity-based probation, dovetail perfectly with the board-building and art skills offered by Alchemy, and with skateboarding’s counterculture.

“Building a community of caring people and a safe space to go is one of the best ways to curb incidences of youth violence or crime,” Woodruff said. “We kind of joke that skateboarding is the right amount of trouble to get into. Something that could have sent you to juvie years ago is now actually being realized as a tool to pull you out of that system.”

Another way to prevent juvenile detention is to reach youth early. Alchemy also partners with Greentrike, a Pierce County nonprofit that focuses on after-school programming with active, enriching pursuits like skateboarding. From grades 3 to 8, students can learn to skate with Alchemy’s instructors and make skate-influenced art. A waitlist for Alchemy’s after-school offerings proves its popularity with kids and school districts.

“Skateboarding gets kids out and active, which is so important these days, and the artistic expression is wonderful,” said Erika Kerr, operations coordinator for Greentrike’s expanded learning opportunities program. “But the core of it is just giving kids opportunities to talk to safe, supportive, trusted adults that they want to connect with, because those adults care about things that these kids care about. The folks at Alchemy are really good at connecting with the kids at their level.”

In the coming years, Alchemy seeks to acquire a larger space for its indoor skate park, its vocational programs and all of its community benefits. Alchemy also wants to expand its reach in Pierce County and beyond. As a start, having recently teamed up with the City of Tacoma, Alchemy secured $1 million of federal funds to build a covered skate park in downtown Tacoma, a project to be completed in the next five to ten years. Meanwhile, this summer, Alchemy will oversee a sanctioned DIY public skate park in the middle of Tacoma.

“We’re working with those systems to advocate for more skateable spaces, whether it’s in schools or in unused parts of the city,” Woodruff said. “We just want to see more spaces to recreate and meet and grow because we’ve seen how impactful it is in our spot.”

As its name implies, Alchemy blends skateboarding with the needs and support of Pierce County to formulate a seemingly magical process of transformation. Yet unlike its ancient namesake, Alchemy Skateboarding has proven its effectiveness and legitimacy in the modern world.