While some of our events are reserved for members only, others are available to all. You can find out what’s on offer from talks to guided walks and tours via our Eventbrite page here. Many of our events are offered free of charge and some are offered both as ‘in person’ and live-stream events.
Here’s what’s coming up next in our Autumn programme for 2025:
Thursday, 20th November, Kingswood Suite, Wakefield Town Hall: Skateboarding in Wakefield – past, present and future?
Did you know that in the 1970s, a few doors up from the Theatre Royal on Westgate, the building once known as the Classic Cinema was also a skatepark visited by the Mayor of Wakefield? Or that during the 1990s, the city was home to one of two famous skateboarding facilities in the country, attracting world-renowned professionals and putting Wakefield into the pages of the national skateboard press? How about that the Old Vicarage on Zetland Street houses a skateboard shop called Division 24 — one of Wakefield’s longest standing independent businesses and supporters of local culture — which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2025.
As young people continue to be underserved recreationally, skateboarding provides a physical and creative outlet that combines sport and arts and builds communities. Wakefield itself has a rich skateboarding culture which spans generations and attracts continues to attract visitors to the city from far and wide.
In a guest presentation, Wakefield-born writer Farran Golding will discuss the city’s history of skateboarding from the late-1970s to the present day accompanied by photographs which depict the changing landscape of Wakefield and the surrounding area over the decades. He will be joined by a lecturer from Leeds Beckett University, who has worked with the Henry Moore Institute on creating safer and welcoming public spaces through the lens of skateboarding, and a local skateboarder discussing Wakefield’s current skate culture and community.
Doors open from 7pm; the presentation begins at 7:30pm.
We hope to be able to offer a live-stream of this event. If this is of interest, please be sure to select the ‘live-stream’ ticket option when booking.
To book, please visit our Eventbrite page here. You don’t need to be a member of the Society to attend.
Catch up on talks you may have missed!
With the advent of lockdown in March 2020, the Society moved many of its events on-line. Most of the webinars we have organised since March 2020 have been recorded and are available to watch on our Vimeo page. To see these and some other short films that we and our partners have produced, visit our Vimeo page here: Wakefield Civic Society (vimeo.com)
(Some of our talks have been recorded but are only available to view by members of the Society and members are sent details of how to access these recordings. If you are a member and have lost the details of how to access the recordings, please get in touch.)