'I’ve skated here for the past seven years. I’ve learned a lot here. I’ve broken bones, and seen other people break bones but I keep coming back because I love it – skateboarding takes me to a good place in my head. It’s a kind of meditation. Some do drugs or whatever, but I skate. People come here [to skate] from all over – America, Brazil, China, everywhere. Everyone benefits from this place, not just skateboarders, so it’d be a shame for it to go' Photograph: Andy Hall
'This place is very well known, nationally and internationally – so when I started skateboarding at 14, you just knew this was the place to go. Almost all of the close friends I have now, I met here. I have friends from very wealthy backgrounds and friends from deprived backgrounds. It’s a really good example of an unprogrammed, uncontrolled space which is left to young people to use for free. None of us are against a redevelopment of the Southbank Centre that improves access to free events. What I’m against is the conversion into retail units. It's ironic that in seeking to redevelop the centre to improve access to culture, the centre is destroying perhaps the most democratic and vibrant example of culture anywhere on the South Bank' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I’ve been skating here since I was 15. I love it - you've got the sound of the water, the view of the city, the London Eye… people are happy to be here. It’s got vibe. I met my best friend here… he’s pretty much a professional skateboarder now, and he cut his teeth here. If it wasn’t for Southbank, he wouldn’t be what he is. It’s a training facility. Take that away, and they’ll be taking a chunk out of us. Even if they move it to just five minutes down the road, the history of the place won’t go with it' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I was about 13 when I started skating. I used to live just outside of the city in Watford, and from meeting people here I started coming down literally every day after school, all the way from Watford. I live with four friends that I met here. You meet people from all over the world – America, Japan, Australia… If we ever want to go over to their neck of the woods, we always have somewhere to stay. It makes it feel a bit like a society. Whatever happens next, though, we’ll try to keep it positive. Just being able to skate next to the river Thames is the most beautiful thing for me and all my friends' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I'm a tailor for a company called Huntsman on Savile Row. They know I skate. I got them all to sign the Save the Southbank petition. A lot of people judge skateboarders, like, "Oh they’re yobs", but most of the people I skate with have all got normal jobs. In America, skateboarding is much more appreciated. Here, it’s still seen as a child’s sport. I’ve been coming down here for 10 years. When I used to come as a kid, I saw so much stuff done by pros you looked up to. And now I'm friends with them because I've been coming here for so long. It’s also good because you don’t get hassled. If you skate in the city, you get kicked out of everywhere. But not here. And now they want to rip it down' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I’ve been coming here four years or so. It’s made me grow up quite a bit. This place can teach you a lot that you can use in your life. When I was younger I was more in-your-face, but you learn to accept people here. You get a lot of inspiration here. When you see someone doing some crazy shit up the wall, or dropping down the stairs god knows how fast, you say, "Yeah I want to do that." It pushes you farther. I’d be distraught if they took it down' Photograph: Andy Hall
'This place means everything to me. It’s the only place I skate, really. I’m here about four days a week, even though it takes me two hours to get here from Hounslow. It’s the best spot in London. It’s everything to skateboarders: it’s the scenery, it’s the area, it’s the people who come here. I made a lot of my friends through skateboarding at the Southbank. I don’t see the point of them taking it away to build a Starbucks or something when you have those everywhere. This place is important. The day they take it away will be a very sad one' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I’ve been coming here for about three years now and the vibe here’s great for BMX. Everyone’s really liberal about letting everyone have a go. You get little kids who come down and they hang about too and that’s all fine as well. It’s an important landmark in London. A lot of people from other countries know about this place from photographs online and in books. It’s known. Hopefully the replacement will be good, but nothing will be the same. It’s like if they moved the lions from Trafalgar Square' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I would not say this is a skate park, I would say this is a temple. It’s a mythic place, not just for UK or London, but for the whole world. Surf pros travel to Hawaii to surf: this is Hawaii in Europe for skateboarders. This was where skateboarding was really born in London. If you could put a good spot in a museum, this would have to be there. I first came to skate here on holidays in 1997. I was living in Portugal at the time, although I’m from Angola originally. When I came to live in the UK in 2006, I had no English: zero. I started coming here to skate, and now the majority of my friends in the UK are from here. In my view, this place is not transportable: it’ll never be the same' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I’m from Italy. I’ve been living in London for four or five months. My first day in London, I came down here. I wanted to meet new people, make friends. It’s legal to write graffiti here so lots of writers come. The walls are always changing. If you do something today, it’ll be gone tomorrow. It’s a bit less exciting here because it’s legal, but it’s cool in a way – you don’t want to take risks every day so you just get some spray cans, come here and chill out' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I used to skate here a bit when I was in my early teens, but the guys were all better than me so I mainly watched. It was kind of weird skating in the Southbank because you’d have lots of people staring at you and you’d be like, “I’m really not very good, stop looking at me”. There was a lot of pressure, especially for a girl. But I’d travel up from Kent just to come here. Now I’m just like any passer-by. I come to the river to chill out, but I always come by this place. You know important skaters are going to be here and it’s always going to be impressive: it’s not like going to any other skate park. I love it here' Photograph: Andy Hall
'We’ve just stumbled across this and we both stood and said "That’s fantastic. What a great space" and how wonderful it would be to have a similar place where we’re from in Dorset. There’s a need for things for kids and for young people in their 20s and even 30s. We’ve got a very small skate park in our recreation ground in Winbourne, but it’s very small, just a curve. It’s such a shame they’re removing it from this spot' Photograph: Andy Hall
'I grew up in Hammersmith and this was always a place that I came – one of the first places I used to come to on my own in central London and just wander about. Back then, it was much greyer and there was no graffiti, but the skateboarders were there. It’s overwhelming bringing kids here. It’s just such a positive area – it’s great. It’s a chance for them to see such a variety of different people all doing their own things. I don’t know many places that are even similar' Photograph: Andy Hall
