God Save the Scene: A United Kingdom Freeski Film

Think skiing in the UK isn’t worth your while, and you need to go to the Alps to find a decent kicker? New homegrown ski film shows the current crop of freestyle talent bursting from the UK’s seams, and why we should all #SkiTheKingdom!

With a lack of big mountains and a tendency to sleet rather than snow in winter, the UK isn’t generally considered a hotbed of freeskiing. Times are a’changing though, and the current generation of fridge and dryslope kids are running riot across the international freestyle scene. It’s not just the likes of James ‘Woodsy’ Woods and Paddy Graham either: there’s a whole crowd of UK-grown talent erupting into the freeski competition circuit right now, and they’re throwing down with the best.

It’s really quite amazing when you consider the facilities they’ve got to work with too. Whereas Austrian and French kids get to head up the mountain with their parents or in school P.E. lessons from about the same time they start learning to walking, the up and comers from the UK get to play with a tens of metres of damp carpet or an oversized refrigerator on an industrial estate somewhere. Tamworth doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Val d’Isere, after all.

But that’s the fantastic thing: rather than give up and moan about it, they’ve turned into into an advantage. As they say, when you have less to work with you have to get more creative to keep it fun, and that’s exactly what they’re doing!

“God Save The Scene” – The Ski The Kingdom Film

Think skiing in the UK isn’t worth your while? Then think again! This summer the Ski The Kingdom team headed on a journey around the UK to continue their mission of supporting, promoting and developing the people, places and attitudes that make the UK Freeski scene so great. The result?

God Save the Scene is a fantastic new film documenting this explosion of talent and passion within the UK freeski community, self-financed and independently produced. It may not have the big budget or lines of their alpine-based counterparts, but it makes up for that with sheer enthusiasm, love, and ingeniousness. Genuinely, no other film this season is so filled with stoke and inspiration. It almost brought a tear to our eyes and lump to our throats. To Jack Tompkins and the Ski The Kingdom crew: we salute you! Thank you for staying weird, and showcasing the best of the homegrown UK scene in such an awesome light.

God Save the Scene was filmed and edited by Jack Tompkins with help from Chris Cheseldine, on location at a wide variety of UK slopes including Stoke, Tamworth, Halifax, Snowtrax [Christchurch], Swadlincote, Gloucester, The Snow Centre [Hemel], Kendal, Xscape [Milton Keynes] and even a secret setup in Hereford. Skiers and Snowboarders include: Will Tucker, Tom Smith, Row Emery, Ant Smith, Josh Jenkins, Gareth Vogan, Harry Shaw, Twig Spensely, Tom Greenway, Luke Rogers, Sam Brennan Tom Crane, Dean Harris, Josh Johnstone, Millie Wilkinson, Ted Halket and more.