Backyard Jam

Backyard Jam is a British BMX contest and jam series founded by Stu Dawkins and first held in Hastings in 1991. It ran until 1997 and again from 2004 to 2006, and was revived in 2019 by Seventies Distribution, the UK distributor Dawkins went on to run. It became the most important home-grown contest in the country during that period. It is remembered for bringing American and European pros to England at a time when few made the trip, and for a loose, rider-first format that gave the events their name.

History

British BMX in the early 1990s was a small scene with limited contest opportunities. Riders followed the sport mainly through imported videos and magazines, and the few UK contests that existed were run by small groups of riders and shops. Seventies Distribution, founded in the south of England, imported and distributed many of the key American brands and became a hub for the UK scene in that decade.

Backyard Jam grew out of the Backyard shop in Hastings, run by Stu Dawkins. The first event, in Hastings in the summer of 1991, was a small, informal gathering on a halfpipe and midi ramp, true to the name, and early prize money was as little as 100 pounds. As the events gained a reputation, the organisers were able to bring in sponsored riders from the United States and continental Europe, and attendance grew. By the mid 1990s Backyard Jam had become the biggest BMX contest in the UK, held at venues on the south coast and elsewhere in England, with pro, amateur and sometimes dirt and street sections, and prize money eventually passed 23,000 pounds.

The original series ended in 1997. It returned from 2004 to 2006 at UK venues including Brighton, and the last of those, in Sheffield in 2006, lost a large amount of money. In 2019 Seventies Distribution revived the name as a UK amateur series, with qualifiers at indoor parks and a final at Adrenaline Alley. The wider story of the decade in which it began is covered in BMX in the 1990s.

Format

Backyard Jam took its name from its format. Instead of the rigid timed runs and judged scores used at televised contests, it used a session style approach.

1. Riders were split into groups and given a set period on the course together, taking turns and riding as they would in a normal session.
2. Judges watched the whole jam and scored each rider on their overall riding, taking account of difficulty, variety, consistency and style.
3. Pro and amateur classes were run separately, and in many years there were separate park, street and dirt events depending on the venue.
4. Finals were run the same way with a smaller group, and best trick sessions were sometimes added at the end of the day.

The courses were often built or adapted for each event, and the venues ranged from established skateparks to temporary set-ups.

Notable moments

• Backyard Jam was for many UK riders the first chance to see American pros ride in person, and the presence of visiting riders from top US brands became one of the event's main draws.
• The events were heavily covered in British BMX magazines and later in UK videos, and footage from Backyard Jams forms a large part of the visual record of British riding from the period.
• Hastings hosted the first Backyard Jam in 1991, and the relationship between the local scene and the contest helped set up the town's later role as home of Battle of Hastings.

Specific results and dates from the series are poorly documented online, and this article avoids listing winners for that reason.

Significance

Backyard Jam gave British BMX a contest that belonged to it. Before the series, the UK scene looked almost entirely to the United States for its reference points. Backyard Jam showed that a British event could draw international riders and produce memorable sessions, and it gave a generation of UK riders a stage at home. Many of the riders who later built the UK's brands, shops, media and events came through the series as competitors or spectators.

The jam format also had lasting influence. Many later contests in the UK and Europe adopted the group-session approach rather than individual timed runs, partly because it keeps the atmosphere of a normal riding session and partly because it works well with small venues and crowds standing close to the course.

The series' link to Seventies Distribution also shows how the UK BMX industry developed: distributors and shops, rather than broadcasters or sanctioning bodies, were the ones putting on events and supporting riders through the 1990s and 2000s.

Related

• Battle of Hastings
• BMX in the 1990s
• Session
• Park
• Street
• Dirt jumping