The Cycle Hub supports The Bristol Bike Project

Paul from The Cycle Hub presents the new tools to Colin at the Bristol Bike Project

Working in partnership with The University of the West of England, The Cycle Hub was given the opportunity to recycle old bikes that students had abandoned at UWE campus. After these bikes were fully safety checked and tuned up they were then sold to current UWE students. The Cycle Hub raised £265 in the process, which has kindly been donated to our project. With this money we have been able to purchase a new set of tools for our ever-expanding workshop. A huge thank you to The Cycle Hub for their support. Happy days!

The Ride Journal

We are pleased to say that the bristol bike project is featured in the latest edition (issue 3) of The Ride Journal, a beautifully presented collection of personal stories related to bicycling. Not only that, but they have also kindly donated some money to the project to help us buy some more tools and equipment. A huge thank you to The Ride Journal team for their support.

Put the Fun Between Your Legs!!

image by chris carlsson
Put the fun between your legs: Become the Bike Bloc Bristol & Copenhagen Nov – Dec 09

For the UN summit Mobilisations in Copenhagen, Climate Camp is teaming up with artactivist collective The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination to design and build a new tool of civil disobedience, to be unleashed on the RECLAIM POWER day of action on 16^th December. Made from hundreds of recycled bikes, The Bike Bloc will merge device of mass transportation and pedal powered resistance machine, postcapitalist bike gang and art bike carnival.

Bike hackers, welders, climate campers, artists and engineers will be working together to design and build The Bike Bloc across two cities: Bristol ((15 – 30th Nov), at the Arnolfini Gallery as part of Platform’s C-words show. Copenhagen (4-18th Dec) at The Candy Factory, Lærkevej 11, 2400 NV. Copenhagen (closest station is Nørrebro st).

Go get involved, either designing and building the prototype in Bristol, putting together the real thing in Copenhagen or swarming with us on the day of civil disobedience on the 16th of December.

Become the Bike Bloc short Film

Maya Pedal

a bicycle coffee depulper which removes the outer shell of the coffee bean allowing farmers to then roast their own beans in the sun.

a soil plow used by hand to work soil, pushing it like a wheelbarrow

One of our growing team of volunteers here at the bristol bike project, henry, has just headed out to Guatemala for 4 months to do some voluntary work for a non-governmental organisation called Maya Pedal. They are a fantastic group that recycle used bicycles to build pedal-powered machines, 'bicimaquinas', which support and help facilitate the work of small-scale, self-sustainable projects. We wish him all the best and hope to keep up to date with his work whilst he is out there.

St Paul's Adventure Playground Workshop

We had the pleasure of spending a day at St Paul's Adventure Playground last tuesday of half term week. We were one of the many activities on offer and we did our best to repair as many bikes as we could. Thanks to all involved at the playground - we had a great time and look forward to the next one!
Some of the kids dropped by our workshop the following day to make repairs to their bikes that we were unable to do out at the playground. Following such enthusiasm from the kids we worked with, we are now in the process of trying to set up an after-school evening workshop for kids wanting to come by and learn how to mend their bikes with us.

new yard space!!

We now have more space for storing and working on bikes! This is the outdoor yard next to our workshop before we started work last week. We found all of the timber in a skip and got going with it. Big ups to henry and joe for their building skills. This now means we have an outdoor space to work in and to store more of your donated bikes.

more bikes!

August has been a great month and we have continued to distribute a lot of bicycles. Thanks again to all of those that have donated their unwanted bicycles to us. We have an ever-growing team of co-volunteers on board which means we are able to work through more of your unwanted bikes. One of them is Rob who is cycling from Cirencester to South Africa and in the process raising money for Re-Cycle starting in October of this year - please have a look at his website www.tri4africa.co.uk to support his amazing journey!!

Will & John

Will came back to see us last week after coming out of detox as part of a Salvation Army program he is on. We had worked with him a month ago and he had gone away very happy with a bike. He told us that that same weekend that he had received his bike, he had cycled 38miles as part of Bristol's Biggest Bike Ride and had not touched any alcohol all weekend because he was so energised from riding his bike.

John (pictured left), working alongside one of our volunteers Will, is another gentleman that we have recently worked with by way of the Salvation Army. He is keen to volunteer with us on a regular basis in order to learn more skills and to keep active.

Slowcoast

http://www.slowcoast.co.uk/

Nick Hand, from Bristol, is riding around the entire coastline of Britain, making soundslide films along the way which document artisans that live and work along it. Take a look.

On his blog, there is a great quote:

“When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man’s convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man’s brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.”

Elizabeth West, ‘Hovel in the Hills’

The Bristol Bike Project Film!

Two months ago, alistair oldham, head of documentary-making at the University of the West of England contacted us about the possibility of making a short documentary about the bristol bike project.

They have been filming the project and the people we work with for the last six weeks and are currently editing the film which should be ready by the end of september. There will be various screenings of the film in and around bristol and we will have a link from our website when it is live. Watch this space!

one hundred bicycles!

well, we've made it! As of this week, we have now restored and distributed 100 bicycles!
Our team of volunteers keeps growing and we continue to receive a steady stream of unwanted bikes - a HUGE thankyou to all those that have supported us in so many ways - by giving us your unwanted bikes, volunteering your time to help us out or just dropping us a positive email telling us how much you like the project! THANK YOU! onwards and upwards.........woo hoo!

New Website

Please take a look at our new website here:

www.thebristolbikeproject.org

We will continue to update this blog with latest news about the project.

Bristol Bike Project at St Paul's Carnival 2009!!!

wowzer, what a day! the sun stayed shining and people turned up in their thousands to see the carnival parade in which we were cycling. Thanks to all involved - here's to next year!

Bike-Costuming Workshops!

These workshops held by our friends Sylvie & Kev at Cap'n Bikebeard last week were in preparation for St Paul's Carnival on Saturday July 4th. They were a great success and a lot of fun was had by all. The procession takes place at 1pm at the carnival on saturday - see you there!there was even time for a bit of stilt-walking!

Workshop May 2009

May has been a very busy but great month for us here at hamilton house and we have seen a lot of happy people cycling away on their new bikes! We have been working with a mixture of both young and old and male and female and we feel extremely privileged to spend time in the company of so many wonderful people from all over the world and from such diverse backgrounds.

We are continuing to receive many unwanted bikes from the general public and we are very grateful to those who have brought bikes down to our workshop and also to everyone that has helped spread the word about what we are doing. Thankyou!