The Hulumale Skatepark build with Pasty and Rob Jones

Photographs by Mohamed Ahsan

Edit by Poulet Leo

A couple of week’s ago, I started spotting a few images on social media of a large scale DIY build in a tropical looking location with what appeared to be a large, skateable killer whale as a centrepiece. Doing some digging via Confusion’s website soon had the location narrowed down to The Maldives, with Hulumale Skatepark being worked on by a large crew of international volunteers who all had an input into the final design. When the build edit appeared it was too much of an intriguing project to garnish with only my sketchy knowledge, gleaned from an office in London at a distance of, according to a quick Google search, 5,288 miles away.

Luckily, Cornish nomad Rob Jones was involved in the build and, when I hit him up, it turned out he was working on the park and sharing living quarters with Justin ‘Pasty’ Ashby. A couple of Facebook messages later and I had a sketchy idea of how the two UK members of the 40-odd crew of concrete craftsman had been enjoying living island life, alongside a bevy of build photos courtesy of Mohamed Ahsan. I say sketchy, because my questions definitely weren’t answered straight after a morning coffee. I’ve no idea what adult beverage is de rigeur in the Maldives, but I’ve reigned in my normally compulsive grammar fixing in order to give you a better sense of where this interview is coming from – which is a fair way into consumption of whatever that drink might be…

Cheers to Rob and Pasty for sorting out these answers, Mohamed for the photos and mad props to everyone who went out and got involved in building such a rad looking slice of concrete for the locals!

How did two skaters from Brighton and Cornwall originally end up as part of a crew building a skatepark in The Maldives?

Pasty: I was busy doing Formula 1 work and got notified about a project in the Maldives so I said yeah, put me forward. Albert and josh got this thing moving and I was quite happy to leave work to go to the island.

Rob: Josh from Wonder Concrete messaged me about a trip to the Maldives and I had no money and no job so it seemed like an offer I could not say no to…