On Marrakech’s outskirts, a skatepark reimagines possibility for local youth

The sun is low in the sky as our Suzuki pulls along an ochre-dusted road to the ancient pottery town of Tameslouht. We’re going through the Al Haouz plain, and we’ve made three stops: the first at the gloved hands of the police, the second because a felled road sign was too good to pass up as skatepark coping, and the third because we’ve picked up Zakaria ​‘Snoopy’ and two still-teenaged skating prodigies, Abderrahman and Raynh. Our final destination is the Fiers et Forts orphanage, where hyped youngsters in Pirelli football shirts and Adidas tracksuits are crowding around the gates of the attached skatepark, street dogs barking and swirling about their knees. There’s a frisson of excitement – everyone anticipating the moment they hit the concrete.

Life is slow in Tameslouht. For the children living at Centre Fiers et Forts orphanage, it was especially so, which is why the centre invited The Concrete Jungle Foundation (CJF) to build a skate bowl on-site in February 2022. Coincidentally, Louis Devereux, a wire-haired 34-year-old inline skater, had been inspired by the charity in setting up a UK inline skate organisation, Skate to Create (STC), but after inadvertently spending COVID-19 in Marrakech, he saw it as an auspicious sign that the rosy bowls and barrels of the looping 740 sq m concrete plaza had opened. ​“It was a very Marrakech-like coincidence that my heroes had opened up within touching distance,” he says of his decision, realising that a skate school would be more beneficial in a country where public facilities and sponsorship possibilities are still limited. 

I am here at the Tameslouht skatepark for this reason, watching from the sidelines of the bowl as Devereux straps on a pair of Standard Omni V2 Skates. He is flanked by Sara, a giggling 12-year-old whose pink hoodie is drawn tightly around her face like Kenny from Southpark, and Youssef, who loudly announces he isn’t going to break his bones – not today, anyway. Since Devereux launched STC, both kids are regulars at sessions. ​“They are completely free to show up however they want, and the sessions are open to the public, so I never really know who is coming,” Devereux says, before skating off towards the bowl to teach. Funded by his twinned hospitality project, Riad Alena, STC sources donated inline skates and equipment, organises nationwide competitions, and hosts free coached sessions, like the one unfolding. 

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Snoopy, a 27-year-old coach with rimmed glasses and a flat cap glued to his head, is still laying out inline skates on the decking by size, from a destroyed pair of princess-pink skates in size 2 to a black pair shot through with blue lighting in size 9. Each set is claimed before it has even touched the floor. ​“I was so excited to just get out and start moving,” he says, remembering his first pair of Razors. ​“We don’t have many specialised skate shops, so most people rely on basic gear from big sports stores or wait for someone coming from Europe to bring high-quality or unique inline skates,” he explains, ​“It makes the gear we do have very precious.”

You can count Morocco’s skate distributors on one hand. With import duties, VAT, and shipping often adding around 30% to the price of boards and shoes, the domestic retail market remains small and underdeveloped. That limited buying power gives international brands little incentive to back local riders, even though the appetite and talent are there. 

A boombox has been hauled into the sidelines, and begins to blare Moroccan rapper ElGrandeToto. I watch 14-year-old Abderrahman, whose small frame dips off the ramp as swiftly and quietly as a swallow on a pool of grey water, before turning sharply and performing a toe roll. Last year, he won the Urban 50 Regional Championship and took 1^st Prize at the 2025 STC Rabat Jamm. For the older generation of Moroccan skaters for whom the dream of being paid to skate felt impossible, it is depressing to think of Abderrahman being denied the same opportunities. 

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Skate culture, including skateboarding and inline skating, has become more mainstream over the past 15 years. It first took root in Kenitra and Casablanca with the American military bases in the ​’60s and ​’70s, where it dovetailed with a well-established surfing culture, but the community has grown from strength to strength. When the Royal Moroccan Federation of Urban Sports (FRMSU) was established in 2017, it was a sign that skating was to be taken seriously. Nassim Lachab was the first Moroccan skateboarder to turn pro in the year skateboarding became an official Olympic Sport. The next few years were hopeful, leading up to the 2024 Olympic Games, but the invigoration has since faded and with it praise for the FRMSU. Now an organisation engulfed in scandal and alleged to be financially corrupt, especially when it comes to inline skating. 

Alongside Centre Fiers et Forts, STC teaches weekly at the DIY skate park, which it partly funded, the Marrakech Anabar Skatepark, and at the state-built Menarra Gardens Skatepark. While state-built spaces, managed by the FRMSU, are on the rise, with MAD 48 million ($4.8 million) earmarked in 2025 to construct 80 multi-use courts in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region, for example, the news is not necessarily welcomed by those on the ground who feel the federation builds skateparks using public funds, with costs that are four or five times higher than the actual expenditure. ​“Most of the ​‘skate’ areas in Marrakech aren’t actually built by specialists who understand skating,” describes Snoopy, ​“The ground is often too rough, the angles of the ramps are wrong, or the material isn’t safe. It makes it very hard for us to improve our skills or perform tricks safely. We don’t just need ​‘places’ to go, we need professional skateparks that are built specifically for the sport.”

Turf wars have broken out between local organisations, split by allegiance to the FRMSU or by attempts to muscle in on prize winnings. It is alleged at the STC-hosted Marrakech Jam of 2024, held in a public skatepark, that six men from another organisation drove up on motorcycles and chased kids with sharp twists of bamboo. ​“I am the king of Marrakech,” eyewitnesses claim one shouted. Participants and their families, who had travelled long distances, were scattered, and the event had to be postponed for three hours. 

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The FRMSU is an official state route to international competition participation and visa sponsorship, but to date, no brand or sponsorship deals have been negotiated for any skaters. An independent visa application is another story. ​“It’s unbelievably difficult to get a visa,” says Devereux. He explains that he has invested time and STC funds towards a particularly talented inline skater, Youness Nait Ihousian, who he believes should be pro, to inline skating competition Winterclash 2025. ​“They say it takes applying three times before they take your application seriously – if Younis had a reference letter, it would have helped, but the FRMSU have not responded to any of our requests.” 

There’s a ​‘European dream’, which many young people hold. But it is a distant dream for many, just reaching the peaks of the southern High Atlas Mountains, glittering on the horizon of the skatepark compound, is much harder than it looks. I’m told an anecdote about a skater a few years ago who immigrated to Europe and found a radically different work situation than he had been led to believe existed. Soon, financially struggling and homeless, he felt unable to disappoint his expectant family waiting for news at home, so he painted his new city in a positive light – one story that sparked countless dreams of prizes, visibility, and a salary better than the 300 euros per month earned at home.

In autumn 2025, youth-led protests broke out across the country. The GenZ 212 movement, largely organised on Discord and TikTok, criticised high youth unemployment, corruption, and failing public education. Around 280,000 students drop out of the school system each year, with middle school students accounting for more than half of those. ​“A lack of public space and boredom can become a real issue, and boredom leads to trouble — like [cocaine-like substance] l’poufa,” notes Devereux, ​“The skatepark is an extra motivation.” 

Although they are in contact with parents, Snoopy and Devereux all become supportive figures – ​“non-teachers can explain the value of school”, a mid-way point between authority and friend. But the real lesson is using skating to teach progress and confidence, manoeuvre by manoeuvre. ​“You see one kid’s frustration at not being able to do their first grind, but then suddenly it changes,” Devereux says. ​“They can apply that ​‘last week I couldn’t do this trick, but now I can do this trick’ mentality to anything.” 

The skatepark floodlights switch on, and hours have passed like minutes. Back at the skatepark, I notice one kid hesitantly hanging on the lip of a kick ramp, looking from their feet back to the horizon, before calculating a perfect push-off; another is hurtling around the bowl at 30km/​h, out of control and fearless, limbs askew like Bambi on ice. There is a moment of irritation as one knocks the other over, before he skates back, arms outstretched to help his brother ​“khoya” up again. While sponsorship deals for inline skating don’t exist, the sense of a tight-knit skate community does. 

Ellie Howard is a freelance arts and culture journalist. Follow her on Instagram.

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