SPEAKERS

We asked the energetic Lucas Guasch to be our festival MC! He's a a Luca Longboards and SYD concept dinosaur longboard dancing team rider, and now also a sponsored balance boarder for Surfvibe Balance Boards (and a lover of surfing!). Furthermore, he is one of the founders of the France Longboard Open in Toulouse: Hit That Jive. We are happy to have him, spreading the joy and vibes!

YOW rider Mariona Pujol Merino got her first skateboard from her grandmother at age twelve and immediately decided she wanted to become a professional skater. She loved going to the Skatepark where almost no girls were skating at that time, yet couldn’t let that break her spirit. She spent hours, days, weeks, months, years ripping and coming home with her legs destroyed, until she got bored because she was skating alone and left skating for a few years. Until one day, she met some girls who skate too, and she retrieved her love for skating.

This 21-year-old super-talented skater is part of the YOW team since 2019 and wishes to break our world’s stereotypes with the philosophy that all life is one. Be sure not to miss her as one of the guest speakers at our festival!

By teaching, inspiring others, making movies and organising events, professional longboarder Axel Massin wishes to spread his love for the sport. What once started as a hobby next to his career as psychologist, soon turned out as a fulltime job for which he’s been traveling the world since. As a collection of injuries put his competing career to an end, he started contributing to the sport by capturing its beauty with his camera. Working with many women in the community, Axel got inspired by many fearless community builders, incredibly talented riders and badass students.

With loads of enthusiasm, he has directed the Longboard Girls Crew’s new documentary that was shot in Barcelona and that will have its world premiere at the festival.

As longboarding completely changed his life and many lives around him, he now finds it very fulfilling to help other people get into it and will also be a speaker at our festival!

Diego's family migrated from South America, and 5 years ago in Europe, Nadie Me Dice Arte, decided to use his distinctive "Paste Up" technique to break stigmas. His murals can be seen across Europe & come loaded with implicit social criticism, representing his determination to raise awareness through art, break down barriers and stereotypes.

He wants to inspire new generations on issues such as migration, racism and in particular repression of women and their active struggle and the propagation of "artistic activism", which he himself defines as: "Art as a means of change and construction of opinion".

Valeria co-founded @longboardgirlscrew in 2010, which would later become the world's largest action sports community that empowers girls & women to skate and break stereotypes in more than 60 countries. Seeing the positive impact a board could have on the lives of so many people around the world, including herself, she created the nonprofit @longboardwomen in 2017 to focus on helping groups of people living in extreme vulnerability, focusing their current humanitarian programs in India, Malaysia and Europe.

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She is a motivational speaker that has given two TEDx Talks and her work has been featured on CNN, BBC, Condé Nast, Instagram, Time Out, ESPN, Buzzfeed and TVE among many others.

Today she combines her time between her energetic work as an Akashic Records teacher and personal development mentor with the nonprofit.

With his project Entrehomes, psychotherapist and trainer Rai Crespí is interested in the transition of men within the fall of the patriarchy. In his work with both individual and group sessions, he aims to create a space where all ways of being a man can have a place.

Rai has a BA in Anthropology, the study of the origin and development of human societies and cultures. Furthermore, he trained in amongst others Gestalt therapy and integrative body therapy, in which mindfulness and awareness are key.

Originally from Russia, Valeriya Gogunskaya is a longboarder who has been living in Portugal for the past eight years and who has been actively involved in building an enormous longboard community through events, social media and by founding the @the_longboard_camp in Santa Cruz, Portugal. The camp is for anyone - all ages, all levels and for people all over the world - who would like to learn longboard dancing / freestyle and wish to connect with other people. Together with Axel Massin she founded @the_longboard_course to lower the threshold and inspire even more people to start skating. Alongside with longboarding, she is passionate about entrepreneurship and loves exploring the relationship between both. Valeriya will be a speaker at the festival and talk about her route of breaking stereotypes as a female and successful longboarder!

Within three years, LGC Switzerland has built a lively longboard community in different parts of the country. Despite language barriers and geographical distance, the crew that is organized as an association managed to reach countless people age 6 to 60 and inspire them to skate, overcome their fears and discover a new passion. They now organise over 40 workshops a year - from Longboard Dancing to Pumptrack and Surfskate -  and attract a lot of attention on longboarding in Switzerland. LGC Switzerland crew members Pauline Michaud, Alexane Dubois, Annina Brühwiler and Anh Nguyen will be at Push Forward Fest to talk about how they found their way to longboarding, what drives them to dedicate a large part of their free time to this project, and they will share tips and tricks about how to build a community!