Wheels Turning Faster…

Professionals from across Cambridgeshire helping to make You Can Bike Too happen!

I seem to have lost a blog in between this one and the last one but no matter! So wheels are turning….The Cambridge News have nominated You Can Bike Too as one of the projects (out of 25 in total) for Cash in the Community! Actually that means that we need people to cut out the tokens that are going to be printed in the paper every day for about one month, then label them “You Can Hub” and take them to the nearest Cambridge Building Society branch. They count up the tokens and we should get a share of £10,000. That would be a BIG help so if you know anybody that reads this paper ask them to cut out the tokens!

The ‘Professionals’ (I always hear that theme music when I say that!) had a meet up at Milton Country Park to talk about how they can support the You Can Bike Too project to move forwards. We had a great turn out – people from local organisations: Councils; Sports Development teams; Sustrans; Cambridge Cycling Campaign; Outspoken bike couriers and trainers; Milton Country Park (which provided the venue for us!); Ability Plus. We also had a representative from national organisation Wheels For All, which has cycling projects all over the country. It was great to get them in all same room talking All Ability Cycling! There were lots of creative ideas and everyone had suggestions of how they could help, from publicising upcoming events to printing flyers, providing lunches, and suggesting contacts. To borrow language from the Do Lectures, all the “little do” actions help the wheels keep turning! Now it’s time for a “big do” from us!

The meeting definitely highlighted the need to think about how we can roll the project out on a practical week to week basis. Do we have membership? I like that idea! Individual membership and possibly corporate membership! Get those Big Boys in!! The local business community could have such fun with these bikes…we’d have the trained up volunteers to support them to have a go.

The Project Team also visited London on Saturday – a benchmarking trip to Victoria Park to see and try All Ability Bikes at Bikeworks in London …and thankfully we weren’t snowed off! Cambridge News met us at the Railway Station to take photographs of the Project Team for a piece in the paper in a couple of weeks – stardom is coming I feel! More details of this visit and pictures to follow!

Lou Shackleton

Change-maker in Chief