Lecturer in Sustainable Tourism curates exciting new surf exhibition at National Maritime Museum Cornwall
26 February 2025
Image by Tom Prentice
Dr Sam Bleakley, an associate lecturer in Sustainable Tourism Management at Falmouth, and former professional surfer and European surf champion, has guest curated the latest exhibition at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall (NMMC).
Entitled SURF!, the exhibition celebrates 100 years of waveriding history in Cornwall, exploring how Cornish surf culture has influenced music, fashion and art, and how the region has become a global stage for surf innovation and activism. Running from 28 March 2025 until January 2027, Surf! will be a major exhibition featured at the museum over the next two years.
Accompanying the surf showcase will be a series of lectures discussing key topics explored in the exhibition, with Sam’s lecture taking place on Thursday 3 April where he will discuss his journey of creating SURF! and how he gathered over 100 surfboards that span a century of waveriding.
We chatted to Sam to learn more about SURF! and how he curated this locally inspired exhibition.
Can you tell us how you began working with the National Maritime Museum Cornwall on this new exhibition and how the journey started?
Each year the NMMC feature two-year exhibitions on various themes such as tattoos, pirates, and now surfing. They approach guest curators for each show, and with my work on surfing and surf history (such as editing The Surfing Tribe: a history of surfing in Britain), I was delighted to be given this opportunity.
The NMMC gave me a great deal of creative freedom to design the narrative, and we really honed in on Cornwall. We focused on ‘waveriding’ so that the show can celebrate ‘100 Years of Waveriding in Cornwall’, reflecting on the long history of prone surfing in the county.
It has involved collaboration with the surf community, photographers, filmmakers, the amazing team at the museum, Parc Signs from St Austell for the fabrication, and A Side Studios from Redruth for the graphic designing. I have to say a big thank you to A Side as they were the first to mention me to the museum team.
I have worked on the show for over a year now. It’s been a big, and at times overwhelming project, but extremely rewarding, exciting and inspiring.
Can you tell us more about what the role involved and your time as a curator?
The first step in curating the exhibition was designing the narrative, which I based around the objects. Then it was collecting the objects, mostly in Cornwall, but some from around the UK. Every object had to be carefully catalogued and insured. Then came writing the large panel information, assisting with the design of the graphic panels and curating various video works.
What details about the exhibition can you share with us?
The show is divided into five sections: ‘culture, craft, art, activism, and inspiration’. ‘Culture’ is about the community, fashion and trailblazers while the ‘craft’ section features insights into the various ways surfboards are made, covering the wood, plastic and innovative designs and ecologically sensitive materials used, and my personal highlight is the huge surfboard design timeline. ‘Art’ features some incredibly striking Cornish surfboards painted by Damien Hirst, Polly Morgan and Nina Brooke. ‘Activism’ charts the early work of Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) – the Cornish-born grassroots environmental charity that campaigns to protect the ocean – and the powerful imagery by SAS collaborator Andy Hughes. ‘Inspiration’ includes photography, film and a collection of European and World Champion trophies from Cornish surfers.
It should appeal to everyone with a healthy curiosity, whether expert or beginner, kid or adult, and even those with no links to waveriding.
What are the key thoughts or ideas you hope people will take away with them when they visit the exhibition and your talk?
Firstly, the inclusivity and blue health benefits of surfing; waveriding is accessible to all and forms a huge part of the history and culture of Cornwall.
I interconnected all the various styles of surfing under ‘waveriding’ so people can accept and celebrate all the different approaches, from first timer to World Champion. This is brilliantly captured in the work of The Wave Project (using surfing as a form of therapy) and the para surf community (with Cornish adaptive surfers Charlotte Banfield, Melissa Reid and Pegleg Bennett all becoming world para surfing champions in recent years).
You currently work as an Associate Lecturer in Sustainable Tourism Management at Falmouth. How does your enthusiasm and passion for surfing interact with your tutoring of this subject?
There are deep links between surfing and tourism. The railways promoted prone surfing to help popularise seaside towns such as Newquay and Bude from as early as the 1930s.
Though I studied geography at Cambridge, it was through travel, professional surfing and competing on the world longboard tour that I got into sustainable tourism. This led to a career of documenting surfing in various ways, such as writing for surf magazines and making films about surf tourism frontiers around the world in a series known as Brilliant Corners.
My links to Falmouth were fostered when I researched my PhD at Falmouth which was based on surfing and travel writing on Haiti. My PhD was a work that specialised in writing and geography, with links to art and tourism, and it was during this time that I became an associate lecturer for tourism and events management, a role where I very much enjoy being part of the Falmouth academic community.
You might also like
Dave Tipper on the lasting influence of an MA in Photography
MA graduate’s photo series sheds light on Australia’s frontier wars
Photography graduate Niamh Shergold wins Portrait of Britain award
Rehab Eldalil on redefining representation in documentary photography
