Event Archives - Page 3 of 18

01/10/202028/11/2020

Bike Birthdays

October is the month of my birthday (hooray!) and it got me to thinking about how bikes might feature in birthday celebrations.

So in honour of my own – and all the other people-rider-birthdayers – this post looks at some creative, kooky and conventional ways bikes can be used for an awesome birthday celebration via the 3 main elements of invitations, food and cakes.

For any other bike-related ideas like locations, games, decorations and activities, there are heaps of websites and ideas on Pinterest. The ideas here are just an entry point to get the inspiration flowing for you next bike-themed birthday party.

For whenever your birthday is….Happy bikey birthday!

Bike Birthday Invite Cards

Of course, you need to let people know it’s your birthday and invites are key. Invitations are a very personal choice and show your particular personality and passion. As well as confirming key birthday event information, invites can also visually set the tone and expectation for the party.

As someone who cares deeply for the environment, I would go for an e-card. But for those who still like print-based outputs, you can’t go past a custom-designed birthday card.

Of course, you can make your own, or use a photo for Canva or print services at places like Officeworks or Kmart, but if you want to minimize the hassle or you can’t be bothered with the design and effort – try Zazzle for bike inspired birthday cards. (This is an Australian service, I’m sure there will be an equivalent if you are living elsewhere).

Zazzl e is a community of researchers, professional artists, manufacturing gurus, patent holders, inventors, musicians and more, who are united by a passion to re-define commerce. They apply technology, design and skills to help customers produce their own products and designs – it is pretty impressive.

As an example, I typed in ‘bicycle birthday invites’ into their search and HEAPS came up. You can use stock designs or create your own. The images below are from Zazzle and are just a few you can get from the initial search:

Bike Themed Party Food

Of course you are going to need some party themed bike food. The below list is more geared towards kids parties, but lets face it, kids party’s often have best snack food.

I’ve also included a few images of more adult, savory and ‘technical’ food (at least in construction) to offset the usual sugary-laden snack food and bike cake to follow.

Here are some bike party food suggestions from the Mighty Mom’s Club:

If you’re feeling ambitious, follow this lead and make chocolate gears as cupcake toppers.
Increase the bling and glitz things up with this gold cake topper.
Why not ditch the classic birthday cake for more portable cupcakes with a bicycle topper? If those are a bit over budget, here’s another adorable option.
This bicycle fruit tray is both healthy and a work of art.
Race your way to a piece of this delicious bundt cake complete with bike lanes and cake toppers.
These super-simple rainbow pinwheels will have all your riders refueling with glee.
Aren’t these chocolate and sprinkle covered pretzels adorable? Put them on display as “kickstands!”
The rules of the road apply to cyclists, too. Lighten up your table with these fruity traffic light skewers.
It’s always a bonus when there’s more than sugar, sugar, and more sugar at a birthday party. This wheels-and-cheese recipe is sure to please everyone especially when you serve it on these trendy plates.

Bike Birthday Cakes

A while ago I wrote about bike cakes (read about bike cakes here), so I will not go over it all again here.

But it does need to be said that bike-themed cakes are AWESOME!

Personally, I prefer home-made bike cakes to store-bought, just because of the diversity, personalisation and effort it takes to make it – but saying that, I won’t be turning down a slice from ANY creative bike cake on a riders birthday.

Bike cakes are only limited by your imagination, time, skill and finances.

In my book, the weirder and more fun the bike cake – the better!

Here are a few examples of bike cakes:

*Just as a side note – I am frustrated by how bike cakes are pretty much solely focused on male riders and perpetuate very traditional ‘masculine’ conventions/performatives in the theming, naming and decorating. One of the only female-rider bike cakes that did not have (all) pink, flowers, balloons, a step-through bike or something hyper-girly was a cake (first one below), from Dubai. More bike cakes that have female-riders who are equally portrayed as diverse, champions, fast, risk-takers, active and adventurous riders, please!

26/09/202023/11/2020

New Materialisms SIG: A/P Tom Reynolds – Multimodality: digital video and the materiality of academic writing.

For nearly 2 years now, I have been the co-convenor (with Dr Sherilyn Lennon) of Griffth University’s New Materialisms (NM) Special interest Group (SIG). We meet each month to read, discuss and experiment with New Materialisms approaches in teaching, learning and research. It is also the framing I am using for my bikes-for-education PhD project.

For this months’ New Materialisms session, we were delighted to host our first international presenter Assoc. Prof. Thomas Reynolds (Dept. of Writing Studies, Uni of Minnesota).

I met Tom after I emailed him following a session he did for an international online teaching conference. Despite the time differences (it was hosted by an Israeli Uni so the international timezone shift was brutal for Aussie attendees – Tom’s session was on at 10 pm Brisbane time), I still attended his session, but they ran out of time for questions. I reached out to him and we got email chatting and I invited him to (re)present for our NM SIG. And he said yes!

Title: Multimodality: digital video and the materiality of academic writing.

Tom’s research interests include critical theories of writing instruction, histories of popular literacy, and intersections of literacy and cultural movements. He is currently writing about multimodality in writing instruction. Tom teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in writing and literacy studies. His classes typically write in and study current media.

Abstract

I have been thinking about how to set new ground for the teaching and learning of writing through a lens of multimodality. In particular, in addition to asking my students to read and write traditional academic texts, I’ve asked them to make group digital videos that advocate for issues that are important to them.

With new materialist ideas, I’m interested in helping students see how their work on these projects might involve engagement with both discursive and non-discursive elements. The attached readings explore writing through a non-discursive and, in Cooper’s case, post-humanist framework.

The ideas for this project are exploratory for me at this stage and will hopefully lead to an article.

What we did

This session was an engaging, fun and productive exploration of Tom’s current project on multimodality, literacy digital video and the materiality of academic writing.

We discussed the two articles and collated some standout concepts (see image) then had a lively conversation following Tom’s presentation about many things, including: who holds power on campus, how to (affectively?) tracing emotional responses to places/space, going on a ‘sound diet’, habituated bodily responses to sound, and territorialising/mapping campus s/p/places as a class/student activity – wow!

It was a real delight to enter a completely different world …that of Tom’s class practice. Each session we get stretched and pulled in different ways and it really helps us to stay open-minded and flexible in our thinking and experimentation.

The discussions were animate, fun and productive – it was a real pleasure to flex our intellectual muscles and share the ideas and lines of flights that emerge for each of us from the conversations, reading and links to our research.

I found Tom’s session and his work to be inspiring and generative – I’d love to be a student in his class!

It also gave me a lot to think about how I teach and holding space for others to tell stories, narratives and learnings via different modalities – a very stimulating session!

Other takeaways included:

How do our habits of thinking and paying attention help us (and our students) transform our writing/understanding/being?
How to give students agency to choose their own passion, to fuel their multimodal creations which (hopefully) leads to better “products” outcomes, but also creative processes leading up to those endpoints?

Readings:

Ceraso, S. (2014). (re)educating the senses: Multimodal listening, bodily learning, and the composition of sonic experiences. College English, 77(2), 102-123.

Cooper, M. M. (2019). Enchanted writing. (pp. 19-44). University of Pittsburgh Press.

Ceraso (2019) (Re)educating the senses Download

Cooper (2015) Enchanted Writing Download

30/08/202001/02/2021

New Materialisms SIG: Janis Hanley – Culture, milieu, and territories

As many readers know, I am using Feminist New Materialisms (FNM) as my framing for my bicycles-for-education PhD project. FNM is a wonderfully rich and challenging approach to be working with. To help deepen my understandings of NM, this year I have been working as the co-convenor (alongside the amazing Dr Sherilyn Lennon) of Griffith’s Uni New Materialisms Special Interest Group (SIG). Each month, we meet to discuss NM approaches, readings ad applications. We do writing and process activities to help activate and stretch our NM understandings and have an invited guest present to broaden our ideas for working with NMs. Click here to see our other New Materialisms sessions.

This post shares some highlights from this month’s NM meeting where we had Janis Hanley (Social Science PhD candidate) presenting on Milieu, Territory, Atmosphere, Agency & Culture.

See more incredible work by Janis at her Local Yarns blog.

New Materialisms SIG: Janis Hanley - Culture, milieu, and territories. Bicycles Create Change.com 30th August 2020. — Image: Digital Rhetoric Collaborative

Janis Hanley – Milieu, Territory, Atmosphere, Agency & Culture.

Abstract: For some time now I’ve been exploring ways to conceptualise organisational culture, and safety culture in relation to organisations as assemblages – both for my PhD project and assisting in WHS research. The ideas I’m currently playing with are milieu and affective atmospheres. This work is for a journal paper presenting a case study of safety at a regional coal fired powerplant (scheduled to be phased out), based on ethnographic interviews conducted by Dr Tristan Casey and myself, about a year ago.

Tristan, a workplace, health and safety expert at Griffith, led the project, and is the co-author. The ideas around this paper are being presented here to test it out as a work in progress, and as a practical application. I hope it will help stimulate discussion around these concepts, and be practical for you in terms of considering your own research. Do these concepts resonate with your research? What new things might they reveal?

The Readings

Wise (2010) Home, Territory and Identity Download

Bennett (2005) The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout Download

What we did: the SIG meeting

This meeting was really great. In a meeting prior to the session, Janis and I discussed the abstract and how best to organise the session. We ended up pivoting from the original abstract and instead, Janis ran us though some of her milleu work from her current PhD project.

This was a really interesting session (aren’t they all!?!). Janis took us on a creative and analytical exploration of milieu, territory, atmosphere, agency & culture. Using some written and visual excerpts from her current PhD research-in-progress on the historical Queensland textile industry, Janis provoked us to consider how milieu, chi, concepts of ‘home’ and atmosphere resonated with us and in our research.

Stand out aspects of this discussion were divergent responses to a piano, political graffiti in a factory and participant appreciation of Janis’s diagrams that showed the ‘bite of elliptical surfboards’.

We also did a number of individual and collaborative activities that helped activate and draw out some points for discussion. I found these to very revealing and generative. You never know what to example or what might emerge – but it is always something unusual and interesting. I took a lot away from this session and it gave me much to think about in regard to how atmosphere, milieu and conceptions of ‘home’ feature in my own work and life. Very provocative.

We also did a writing activity. This is one of my favourite things to do I n the SIG as it really helps me try and apply and explain NM considerations in writing, which is a critical skill I need for writing up my dissertation – so any help, practice and feedback I can get with this is very welcomed.

The writing activity we did was for us to write for 10 mins and then share and discuss interesting aspects that emerged. Below was our stimulus for this task.

Writing Activity:
Think about the layer of milieu or territory in your research.
Write a 100 word or so autoethnographic piece inspired by your musings.

Below are some snapshots of our discussions and a draft of this session’s writing activity.

25/08/202028/10/2020

Dissident Bicycles (Part 5): ’The Art of Free Travel’

In this post, we look at how Meg Ulman, Patrick Jones, their two children (aged 11 and 2) and pet dog used an incredible 6,000km family bike tour up the east coast of Australia as a way of putting into action their ethical, environmental and social principles. This is the fifth and last instalment of our August 5-part series written by Laura Fisher exploring how bicycles are used as a dissident object in contemporary art. Previously we looked at Ai Weiwei’s ‘Forever’, then ‘Returnity’ by Elin Wikström and Anna Brag, then ‘Shedding Light’ from Tutti Arts Oz Asia Festival. The last post was on how public space is being creatively activated as sites of protest using bicycles by the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Enjoy! NG.

The Art of Free Travel

A final project that demonstrates the power and promise of the bicycle is the 6,000-kilometre journey taken by “Artist as Family”: Meg Ulman, Patrick Jones, their two children (aged 11 and 2) and pet dog.

As writers, gardeners and environmentalists, Ulman and Jones exemplify the ecological sensibility that a growing number of us embrace. In 2015 they decided to take up this environmental imperative as an artistic-philosophical project.

Over a period of 14 months the family rode their bicycles from their home in Daylesford in Victoria to Cape York in Northern Queensland, during which time they lived by foraging (they had extensive knowledge of edible plants), fishing, trapping, exchanging labour for food on farms, and through the hospitality of friends and strangers.

Click here for Meg and Patrick’s blog: THE ARTIST AS FAMILY

Dissident Bicycles (Part 5): ’The Art of Free Travel'. Bicycles Create Change.com 25th August 2020.

Their blog posts and book attest to the heightened engagement with the world that bicycle travel affords: two-year-old Woody was able to identify an enormous variety of animals and plants, and meaningful connections were made with the many strangers who invited the family into their homes, sharing their knowledge and stories.

The physical demands of cycling focused their minds upon the needs of the body and the available sources of energy replenishment.

As these projects demonstrate, the bicycle is a nimble tool for individual and collective agency and a catalyst for knowledge creation, self-awareness and meaningful social encounters. It is a technology that serves our need for self-reliance and exploration, without surpassing the body’s capabilities.

In an era in which we are incarcerated by our affluence – through work, debt, declining physical and mental health, and an exploitative and wasteful dependence upon the declining natural resources – the bicycle is the ultimate dissident object and symbol of freedom.

Laura Fisher is a post-doctoral research fellow at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. In October 2015 she co-curated Bespoke City with Sabrina Sokalik at UNSW Art & Design, a one night exhibition featuring over 20 practitioners celebrating the bicycle through interactive installations, sculpture, video, design innovation, fashion and craft. This event was part of Veloscape, an ongoing art–research project exploring the emotional and sensory dimensions of cycling in Sydney.

The contents of this post was written by Laura Fisher and first published online by Artlink (2015). Minor content edits and hyperlinks/footnotes edited to aid short-form continuity.

21/08/202022/10/2020

Dissident Bicycles (Part 4): ’The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination’

This is the fourth instalment of our August 5-part series written by Laura Fisher exploring how bicycles are used as a dissident object in contemporary art. The first looked at Ai Weiwei’s ‘Forever’, the second ‘Returnity’ by Elin Wikström and Anna Brag and the third was ‘Shedding Light’ from Tutti Arts Oz Asia Festival. Here we look at how the UK’s activist organisation ‘The Lab‘ use bicycles to assert creative civil disobedience to subvert dominant power structures. Enjoy! NG.

The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination: Bike Bloc (2009)

Also using public space creatively, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination in the UK have mobilised bicycles to serve quite different ends.

The Lab is an activist organisation that has devised inventive forms of creative civil disobedience to assert an alternative to the nexus of capitalism, consumption and environmental destruction.

They try “to open spaces where the imaginative poetic spirit of art meets the courage and rebelliousness inherent to activism”.

In 2009, the Lab developed the Bike Bloc as a form of direct action for the UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen (the unsuccessful forerunner to the recent Paris Climate Talks).

Hundreds of people worked over several weeks to design and weld activist bicycles and practise “street action cycle choreography”.

Double Double Trouble – a Dissent Bicycle-Object

Some of these were paired tall-bikes that gave riders a great height advantage (confiscated by police before the protest), while others were equipped with megaphones that played music, sirens and abstract sounds in synchronicity.

One such bike recently featured in Disobedient Objects, an exhibition developed by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London which toured to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

As the video documentation shows, the Lab embraced the model of an insect swarm in order to create a dispersed field of sound and activity that drew police attention in different directions.

What makes this action so compelling artistically is the intersection of DIY cycle culture and the lessons of radical theatre and performance.

The bicycle was assessed for what kind of form it might contribute to coordinated protest, notably creating a fluid field of assembling and disassembling bodies and sound.

The contents of this post was written by Laura Fisher and first published online by Artlink (2015). Minor edits and hyperlinks added and footnotes removed to aid short-form continuity. Images from Makery unless attributed.

17/08/202022/10/2020

Dissident Bicycles (Part 3): Oz Asia Festival ‘Shedding Light’

In this post, we continue our August 5-part series written by Laura Fisher exploring how bicycles are used as a dissident object in contemporary art. The first post looked at Ai Weiwei’s most iconic bicycle-based artworks ‘Forever’ and the second detailed the ‘reversed engineered’ bike project ‘Returnity’ by German art duo Elin Wikström and Anna Brag. Here we look at the incredible collaborative illuminated bike-light-culture- performance ‘Shedding Light’ from Tutti Arts Oz Asia Festival 2015. Enjoy! NG.

Dissident Bicycles (Part 3): 'Shedding Light' Oz Asia Festival. Bicycles Create Change.com 17th August 2020.

Shedding Light – Tutti Arts & Oz Asia Festival (2015)

We left off the previous post on the ‘reversed engineered’ bike project ‘Returnity’ by German art duo Elin Wikström and Anna Brag, with the idea that experimentation can be used to engage cory and mind in such a way as to galvanise both personal autonomy and social affinity.

This was further demonstrated by the Shedding Light project that featured in the 2015 OzAsia Festival in Adelaide.

Shedding Light was a two-year collaboration between Tutti Arts, a multi-arts organisation for artists with a disability in Adelaide, and Perspectif, a sister organisation in Yogyakarta 2013.

Among the many mediums through which the artists explored the Indonesia–Australia relationship were creatively constructed carts inspired by the Indonesian kaki lima (street vendor carts), and vehicles inspired by Sepeda Lampus, the four-wheeled pedal cars augmented with neon lights and sound systems hired out at the Sultan’s Palace square in Yogyakarta.

This part of Shedding Light was realised in collaboration with James Dodd, an artist who has long engaged in bicycle modification as part of a practice concerned with informal and incidental forms of public creativity.

Dodd fabricated the pedal cars using two bicycles so that they could accommodate a Tutti artist, a support companion and a passenger.

The neon light frames were modelled upon designs created by three Tutti artists: a unicorn (William Gregory), a shark (Joel Hartgen) and a three-headed snowman (James Kurtze).

Over several nights, passengers would be taken a short distance around the Adelaide Festival Centre Plaza to a special location where a short performance by another Tutti artist was staged for them.

Like Returnity (see our previous post Part 2) , Shedding Light involved modifying bicycles to facilitate a creative social intervention, in this case tied to the aim of enhancing the visibility of Tutti artists.

As Dodd relates, what made the project so rewarding and unusual was that it created intimate encounters between festival audiences and the Tutti artists out in the streets, far from the organised formality of ticketed events.

13/08/202013/10/2020

Dissident Bicycles (Part 2): Brag & Wikström’s ‘Retunity’

This August, we have a 5-part series written by Laura Fisher exploring how bicycles are used as a dissident object in contemporary art. The first post looked at the importance and impact of one of Ai Weiwei’s most iconic bicycle-based artworks ‘Forever’. In this second instalment, Laura looks at the refashioned (literally) ‘reversed engineered’ bike project entitled Returnity by German art duo Elin Wikström and Anna Brag. Enjoy! NG.

Dissident Bicycles (Part 2): Brag & Wikstrom's 'Retunity'. Bicycles Create Change.com 13th August 2020.

While Ai’s bicycles are polished and quiescent, many other artists have employed the bicycle’s movement to activate different kinds of individual and social behaviour. For example, in 1997, as part of the Skulptur Projecte in Münster, Germany, artists Elin Wikström and Anna Brag staged an event called Returnity.

They engineered nine bicycles to travel backwards when they were pedalled forwards, and equipped them with training wheels and a rear-view mirror.

A bicycle club was set up in a public park for three months, providing instructions to members of the public who attempted to ride the altered bicycles. In the end, over 2,000 people participated with about a quarter of these returning again and again to improve their skills.

These bicycles were a prop for heightening people’s spatial and sensory awareness. They also created an unusual social space. As Maria Lind remarked, it “was a playful test that referenced lifelong learning [and] connectivity in a globalised world” and an exercise in “radically rethinking and deliberately disorienting one’s naturalised behaviours”

Lind’s comments about Returnity are a reminder that the bicycle’s humility as a human scaled machine paradoxically gives it great power. Not only is it open to inexhaustible experimentation, it can engage the body and mind in such a way as to galvanise both personal autonomy and social affinity.

05/08/202020/10/2020

Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies in Lunsar

This post is a shout out to the community I did my bike PhD fieldwork with – and a call to action to help them when they need it most.

Regular readers of this blog know that earlier this year I went to Sierra Leone, West African to do my fieldwork. My research partners with bicycle NGO Village Bicycle Project and I worked alongside Karim ‘Stylish’ Kamara (VBP Country Manager).

I returned a week before COVID lock down and quarantine was made mandatory (phew!!). Since then I have kept in close contact with Stylish and many of the amazing people I met in Lunsar.

Since my return, I have been worried about Stylish and my Lunsar friends – dreading the arrival of August because of that is when the seasonal torrential rains come.

As well as being an incredible bicycle advocate and business man, Stylish is also very active supporting his community in a number of roles and ventures. Some of these ventures are bicycle-related, others are not.

Stylish’s VBP bike shop supplies COVID precautions for all riders, customers, visitors and staff.

This post looks at one of Stylish’s most significant community program that occurs outside of his role as ‘The bike king of Sierra Leone’ – yet one that is arguably just as important – his annual August Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies in Lunsar.

August is the most difficult month in Sierra Leone

The rainy season in Sierra Leone runs June – September. August is always the most difficult month. Every August, there are devastating rains, storms, flooding and landslides and thousands of the most vulnerable lose their homes, crops, livelihoods and sometimes lives. Schools, markets and health services shut down and people are forced to stay home because it is too dangerous – people and children get swept away and killed.

Last year, there was a particularly devastating mudslide in Freetown that killed many living in shanty towns and locals called it ‘the day the mountain moved’. These communities are still rebuilding even now as the rains come. The video below showing the build-up last year gives a sense of the gravity of the situation.

August rains often constrain access to essential services due to flooded streets and bridges, debris blocking roads and poor communication networks. A lack of electricity means the full impact on the most vulnerable families is not known until much later. This year preparations are more acute given additional COVID lockdown.

Every August many schools in Lunsar shut down. This means kids are missing out on continuing their education and often they fall behind.

In an account on Study, Read , Write, but most importantly: Listen, traveller Zoe details her experience being in the rainy season in Sierra Leone. Her experience highlights the impact torrential rains have on locals and slum communities, especially in regards to sewage, electricity and health via spikes in malaria and other diarrhoeal and vector borne diseases.

Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies in Lunsar

Stylish with participants of the 2019 Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies.

Last August, Hellen Gelbrand set up a Go Fund Me: Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies to help Stylish run a month-long feeding and schooling program for 100 local kids. This meant kids got a meal for lunch (for most it was their only meal of the day) and were able to continue their studies.

Hellen writes ‘August is the hardest month in Sierra Leone, well into the rainy season with dwindling food supplies in subsistence farming communities. It’s especially hard on kids. In what has become an annual program, Karim Kamara, a young Sierra Leonean, is planning a month of extra schooling and nutritious meals for 125 students at the King Kama primary school in Lunsar. Five teachers, including head teacher Mr. Alie F. Kamara (no relation to Karim), will be employed to teach the children—many of whom are orphans, and all from poor families where one meal a day is the norm for August.”

The 2020 Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies program starts this week and needs your help to raise $3, 100 to make this program happen.

Donate here

This program is a remarkable example of a grassroots community-driven initiative made possible by Stylish – a person whose first love is bicycles, but who saw a need and took action to make positive change for those who need it the most in his community.

Husband and I have supported this program and we are rallying others to do the same.

Please give generously and support Stylish and the children of Lunsar.

2020 Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies students.

18/06/202031/07/2020

Two 90-year-old WWII veterans cycle 167kms to commemorate D-Day

Another epic cycling story! If you were impressed fifteen-year-old Jyoti Kumari’s 1, 200kms bike ride to get her disabled father home, here is another inspirational epic ride. This story is about two 90-year-old WWII friends who are undertaking a commemorative stationary cycle challenge. After seeing this story, I will never accept “I’m too old” as an excuse not to cycle again. Wow!! Most people don’t ride 167kms, left alone in their mid-90s. There is hope for us all. What a way to commemorate a significant part of your life – AND raise money to help others in need. Enjoy. NG.

Two 90-year old WWII veterans are undertaking a 167 km (104 mile) charity cycle to commemorate the 76^th anniversary of D-Day.

The two friends, Len Gibbon (96) and Peter Hawkins (95) are both Normandy veterans.

The distance was chosen because it is the same distance that Len Gibbon’s took as a solider to get from his home in Portsmouth to the front in Normandy in 1944.

Using stationary bike they aimed to cover the distance from Portsmouth to Gold Beach by D-Day on June 6^th.

Both men are in wheelchairs, but this has not stopped them. To do the cycle challenge, they are using stationary bikes so they can still be comfortably seated while cycling.

Len Gibbon (96) started his cycle on VE day and has been riding every day since.

Already, they have raised over US$8, 500 for the charity Just Giving.

Mr Hawkins landed at Gold Beach a few days after Mr Gibbon in 1944 and was awarded a belated Legion d’Honneur for “recognition of military service for the liberation of France”.

Mr Gibbon said: “Although I’m 96, I still like to be active and take on new challenges. By cycling the same distance as the journey I took 76 years ago, it feels like a fitting tribute to those who were part of the Normandy landings.

The Normandy landings were like nothing else. You had to climb down this rope netting which hung down the side of the boat. Then when we got down to a certain point, someone shouted ‘Jump!’ and you had to fall backwards, someone caught you and pushed you on to the smaller landing craft to take you to shore.”

Originally from Elephant and Castle in London, Mr Gibbon joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a despatch rider when he was 20 years old.

In early June 1944, he got married and four days later he was posted to Normandy.

At Care for Veterans where he lives, physiotherapists have been working with Mr Gibbon on his balance and endurance.

His leg strength and overall fitness have improved with physiotherapy and he can now walk around safely with a mobility frame and supervision.

Taking part in this challenge would not have been possible without the physiotherapy.

Gibbons added: “Raising money for Care for Veterans means we can continue to help others who need support in later life.

I’m a keen dancer and am still able to have a dance with the other residents which keeps me young. I love to do the Cha Cha.”

Mr Gibbon was in Normandy through to the end of the invasion, then went to the Netherlands via Brussels, and was part of Operation Market Garden in September of 1944.

From there, he was posted in Germany, which is where he was when the war ended.

He recalled: “I was on my way to Hamburg, riding my motorbike along the autobahn by myself.

Suddenly a Spitfire was flying above me, came right down as if it was going to land on the road, then flew back up and did a loop. The pilot shouted down to me with thumbs up, shouting ‘victory!’

Then I knew it was over. I stood up on my bike, arms in the air, cheering.”

*Some content and images sourced from News Chain, Belfast Telegraph, CGTN and The Daily Mail.

03/06/202017/07/2020

World Bicycle Day 2020

For the last 5 years, this blog has celebrated the positive impacts bicycles have on people, places, communities and the environment.

Last year, I celebrated World Bicycle Day by going for a ride, attending the Mabo Oration and meeting Assoc. Prof. Chelsea Bond. The year before that, 2018, was the inaugural World Bicycle Day – it’s first time ever so I had an extra post looking at how it all came about. For 2020, we’ll look at the UN’s perspective of how WBD 2020 contributes to improving global health.

World Bicycle Day 2020. Bicycles Create Change.com 3rd June 2020. — Happy World Bicycle Day 2020! Image: Tantaran.com

Happy World Bicycle Day 2020!

I hope you had a great time out and about on two wheels!

To see photos and stories from how others spent World Bicycle Day 2020 – check out #WorldBicycleDay and #JustRide

People celebrate World Bicycle Day in many ways. Some people do it on bikes, others do it for bikes. It was a delight to see the myriad ways people honoured the humble bike – riding with friends, making art, sharing music, having critical conversations, holding events and all kinds of advocating for more positive bike change.

One example was MP Jim McMahon (Oldham, UK) who wrote a letter to Oldham Council encouraging them to look towards off-road routes for future cycling and walking infrastructure projects in his local area.

The UN Perspective of World Bicycle Day

For the UN, World Bicycle Day is:

To acknowledge the uniqueness, longevity and versatility of the bicycle, which has been in use for two centuries, and that it is a simple, affordable, reliable, clean and environmentally fit sustainable means of transportation, fostering environmental stewardship and health

In large part, this is in response to the fact that, internationally, the mobility needs of people who walk and cycle – often the majority of citizens in a city – continue to be overlooked. The UN Share the Road Programme Annual Report 2018, shows that the benefits of investing in pedestrians and cyclists can save lives, help protect the environment and support poverty reduction.

Walking and cycling continues to be a critical part of the mobility solution for helping cities de-couple population growth from increased emissions, and to improve air quality and road safety.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), safe infrastructure for walking and cycling is also a pathway for achieving greater health equity.

For the poorest urban sector, who often cannot afford private vehicles, walking and cycling can provide a form of transport while reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, and even death.

That means bikes are not only healthy, they are also equitable and cost-effective. There are many reasons to love bikes, for example…

Bikes are a simple, reliable, clean and environmentally sustainable means of transportation
Bikes can serve as a tool for development and as a means not just of transportation but also of access to education, health care and sport
The synergy between the bicycle and the user fosters creativity and social engagement and gives the user an immediate awareness of the local environment
The bicycle is a symbol of sustainable transportation and conveys a positive message to foster sustainable consumption and production, and has a positive impact on climate

Internationally, the aim of World Bicycle Day is to:

Encourage specific bicycle development strategies at the international, regional, national and subnational level via policies and programmes
Improve road safety, sustainable mobility, and transport infrastructure planning and design
Improve cycling mobility for broader health outcomes (ie preventing injuries and non-communicable diseases)
Progress use of the bicycle as a means of fostering sustainable development
Strengthening bike and physical education, social inclusion and a culture of peace
Adopt best practices and means to promote the bicycle among all members of society

Regardless of the reason you ride bikes – you are in very good company!

Keep riding, be healthy and have a awesome World Bicycle Day today!

Parts of this content is taken/edited from the UN World Bicycle Day official website.