Made to Skate: The making of our short film

In February 2024, we released Made to Skate: a short film following our awesome Nieuw-West skaters. Working with an all-female film crew, the girls shared their take on how skateboarding, together with like-minded companionship, builds confidence, resilience, fun and freedom!

The film’s inspiration: See them, be them

Director Aarathy Balasingam joined our Nieuw-West skaters week in, week out to share in their milestones and create a space where they felt confident sharing their stories, their way.

“As a female filmmaker of Sri Lankan-Tamil descent, I missed seeing girls and women that look like me portraying certain roles or telling certain stories. As an artist, I try to create this for myself — and that’s also the reason why I joined the Project Fearless team.
I wanted the Nieuw-West girls to be involved as much as possible and let them be in charge of their own narrative: asking the girls what kind of story they want to tell and what they want to show the world.”

Aarathy Balasingam, director: Made to Skate

Building confidence, resilience and freedom to be ourselves

With Made to Skate, Aarathy wanted to show how important it is to create spaces where girls feel supported to step out of their comfort zones. Her film traces what working through self-limiting beliefs looks and sounds like, as they affect how lots of girls see themselves:

Between ages 8-14, girls’ confidence drops by 30%

Between ages 12-13, the percentage of girls who say they’re not allowed to fail increases by 150%

Nearly 80% of girls want to feel more confident in themselves

More than half of teen girls feel pressure to be perfect

But when kids know there’s a crew around them who have their back, they gain the confidence to give new things a try and overcome that fear of failure. Staying determined and encouraging each other, we see how the girls’ self-confidence and resilience grow over their 8 weeks of skateboarding with Project Fearless. This is especially meaningful in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, where there’s a large Islamic community but not many girls-only spaces for sports and socialising.

The girls also share what skating’s helped them realise about goals and growth — and, most importantly, how they’re defining progress and success on their terms. We see how their self-belief increases, ending with their role-model advice for other young skaters in their community and beyond:

“Just give it a try. And if you can't do it, don't give up.”
Safa, age 11
“You can do it, you might find it scary, but you have to keep trying to really be able to do it.”
Nisrine, age 11
“I would say to those girls who still want to skateboard, that they don't have to be afraid. Because you're in a place where all the teachers are nice, and they’ll always help you. So you don't have to be scared at all.”
Dua, age 11

And it’s not just the girls — our Coaches feel it, too. For Sam and Madelief, every session they lead gives them a chance to reflect on the learnings they share with the girls: how they approach and stretch their own comfort zones as adults; how they deal with trying and failing. Plus, the sessions are welcome nudges to reconnect with the pure fun and freedom of skating 🛹

The brains behind Made to Skate

Aarathy concepted, directed and edited Made to Skate as part of her creative internship with Project Fearless — and designed those 🔥 t-shirts you’ll see in the film!

She also hired an all-female crew to collab with on production, sound and photography. From being pretty tentative at first, the Nieuw-West girls ended up buzzing to work with this inspiring, skilled creative crew. That’s a testament to Aarathy’s approach to making the film, guided by the Project Fearless way of doing things: letting kids take their time to get comfortable enough to stretch themselves; patiently building trust; encouraging, but never forcing, ourselves out of our comfort zones; and leading by example, to show there’s room for girls and women to build, make and be whatever they want.

“The film industry is still very male-dominated and I thought it would be awesome to have the team working on this project match with the message Project Fearless wants to convey as an organisation.
Together, I hope we can make a difference by using our gender as a strength and showing the world what we as women and girls are capable of. It’s time for us — women and girls — to (re)write our own narratives.”
Aarathy Balasingam, director: Made to Skate

Go you, Aarathy!