Squad Culture is Design Culture

Even in individual pursuits

@rocks.ca — aka Ben Stone Fenton — is a climber, photographer, designer and the founder of Balancing Acts, a community platform with a mission to make outdoor expression, connection, and education accessible to people from every background. Up until a month ago, Ben was on tour, bringing bouldering workshops to the peeps of New York, LA, Paris, London and Montreal.

There is a lot of noise picking up in the outdoor space right now and I look to BA, Ben and his climbing crew, Earth Slip, to guide me through it. It obviously doesn’t hurt that many of them double as designheads on the System A team at Arc’teryx, contributing to some of the best nuggets of functional fashion over the past few years.

There’s a strong connection between the design community and the climbing one, and I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to sit down with Ben and talk through some of that overlap. We talked form and function, story-telling and self expression, and of course, design and accessibility — a very on brand topic for Designheads.

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What’s the Balancing Acts story?

I’ve been rock climbing my whole life — it’s akin to my identity. But at a point in my early 20s I stepped away because I felt misunderstood in the sport – I couldn’t relate to anyone and I felt like an outlier. The people pushing the culture never seemed to look outward, and it felt like there were photocopies being made of the same people over and over. 

I gravitated towards other subcultures to find connection, skateboarding being a big one; and then going to art school and being surrounded by so many amazing folks. One day I had a realization that instead of losing the climbing portion of my identity, I should utilize my knowledge and inherited privileges in the sport to open it up to all these folks that I love so dearly and admire from my other worlds.

I see Balancing Acts in versions like software and right now we are in V3. Going all the way back to V1 [cue flashback], it was really a selfish endeavor: I just wanted to have people from other portions of my life integrated into rock climbing, so that I could have friends to go out with. I started doing these outdoor climbing workshops informally for my friends one summer, and it just kind of snowballed from there.

Tell me about the rock wall you built.

After a season of outdoor workshops, I was setting up to throw a big party to celebrate all the hard work everyone had put in. I saw on Facebook Marketplace one day that someone was selling an old climbing wall for 400 bucks, and I asked my friends who had this studio where we had been hosting workshops if they would be down to host it. They were over the moon at the idea, so with a little bit of cash and some hard work, me and my friends picked it up, took it back to the studio and built it. 

We had the party, where people were just gonna come, drink some beers, and we were gonna have a photo slideshow. The climbing wall was a big surprise. Everybody started geeking out about it, and people climbed on it all night. We’ve been hosting bi-monthly climb nights ever since, trying to provide a third space for people to gather and enjoy themselves throughout the winter months – open door policy, always inclusive, always free.

You mentioned third spaces, what’s your philosophy there? And how does the world tour fit into that?

Balancing Acts is a space where we can provide access to rock climbing. You can show up and express yourself in your own way, even if you just want to come and hang out, drink a couple beverages, eat a snack or two and watch. You could collect sticks and stones – that’s a day of rock climbing in my book. 

I make this comparison all too often, but rock climbing is a lot like skateboarding; you’re just sitting around for most of it and watching your friends do it. It’s not actually about going climbing, it's about being together.

And the world tour was a concept I came up with after having so much success already with Balancing Acts locally in Vancouver. I started seeing people elsewhere doing cool stuff, and talking to them I realized how important it was for us to support each other with resources, knowledge, and opportunity. I wanted to connect with like-minded folks and build this network of people around the world, along with incorporating these brands that have the funds but need a way to distribute them to the right communities.

It’s funny because, when I first discovered Balancing Acts, it was at the end of a rabbit hole on Instagram. I was discovering what seemed to be a network of all these dope creatives that were connected somehow, and Balancing Acts turned out to be that common thread between them. And since you mentioned skating already — I do feel like there’s an analogy there, between skating and climbing culture. Everything in skating is a squad culture, or at least in skating, a lot of times those squads are what evolve into the brands we associate with.

I 100% agree. I wanted a crew. And through my journeys climbing outside, I've grown to have that around the world, a little crew of friends that I can link up with – they're my people and I love them. I’ve never had that before. They're the ones that I'll go and film with and that I'll go on trips with: Teddy, Cheyna, Noah, Nat, and so many others. 

I'm really fortunate that the System A team at Arc’teryx is composed pretty much entirely of them. And not many people realize that – that we're all best friends and we just happen to get to represent Arc’teryx in this new and futuristic way. The trips that we go on, regardless of a company sponsoring it, are trips that we’d do together.

I love that climbing has such a robust functional fashion and object culture embedded in it – carabiners, crash pads, and all the different gear you use. I remember seeing a picture on Teddy’s Instagram, where you guys had a crash pad decorated with a Brain Dead rug and I thought it was hilarious. For you, I wonder where’s the intersection of function and expression or I wonder how you’ve seen some of these more functional objects evolve into more expressive spaces like furniture and fashion through movements like Gorpcore?

There's three forms of outdoor rock climbing: sport climbing, trad climbing and bouldering. Each form has its own style and expression, similar to street, bowl and vert skating. We all ride with wheels, but we are different kinds of people and have different kinds of vibes. The big thing in bouldering is how minimal it is in concept, so there aren't a ton of opportunities for self-expression – you gotta get creative.

The few places you can express yourself are your chalk bag and your pants … And pants is a big one. If you talk to any boulderer, they are always in search of the perfect climbing pants – I have a lot of calls with System A just about pants. And I have this chalk bag from Braindead that I’ve been in love with. Braindead is one of those brands that I've been a fan of since I was a teen and I’m fortunate enough to be friends and work with them now. 

Stussy is another one of those brands that I looked up to and now have been fortunate to work with. Years ago, I was able to model in a Stussy x Gramicci collaboration. We bouldered in my apartment. It was really fun. That was a thing I used to do during quarantine, I would just climb my sofa or my cabinets or I would climb between doorways.

I always approached rock climbing as a really playful thing. I think it annoys a lot of people because it doesn't look like I take it very seriously – and I don't. I've never seen anyone in rock climbing express themselves the way I want to express myself. The only times I've ever seen it is in old videos from the 90s/early 2000s. 

There's these old climbing videos from way back that I grew up watching then and they're gold. But they happened and then it died. Competition climbing took over and the culture went a different direction.

For me, rock climbing is all about storytelling. I don't really care how strong you are or what grades you send. For me, it's always been about capability, which is the reason I feel like it's the same as skateboarding. When you learn how to kickflip, it doesn't mean you stop doing that trick. You want it to feel easier, you wanna be able to take it elsewhere, and have it in your bag, so that when you get to something special you're able to utilize it there. Rock climbing is the exact same energy. I want to be fit and healthy, so when I get the privilege to go somewhere I've never been, I'm capable of climbing what my heart desires.

What's next for you and Balancing Acts?

Well, I just finished the World Tour. We're going to try and take it a little bit easier and slow things down. Growth is important, but so is rest. BA was never meant to get too big and so I want to focus locally and keep my feet grounded in my community. It's really important to gain reach and visibility, but if you're not taking care of the people that you're connecting with, then outreach and visibility doesn't really do you much.

I want to provide some new workshops and avenues for outdoor expression and connection. Rock climbing is my expertise, but I also want to start tapping in with people in my community that can provide other forms of expertise. There's some other things that I want to explore too, like understanding the ecology around us – the plants, the materials and the history of the land that we are so privileged to enjoy.