Project Archives - Page 3 of 8

11/03/202013/01/2022

Celebrating Isata Sama Mondeh – IWD 2020

Celebrating Isata Sama Mondeh

A central theme for International Women’s Day (IWD) 2020 is celebrating women athletes and increasing their visibility.

For this year’s International Women’s Day, I’d like to introduce you to Isata Sama Mondeh.

I met Isata while in Sierra Leone in February doing PhD Fieldwork.

I was keen to meet Isata because not only is she Sierra Leone’s long-standing National Elite Women’s Champion – but she is also the first-ever female bike mechanic in Sierra Leone AND the first female bike mechanic to run their own bike shop. OMG!

Isata learned bike mechanics and shop management through Village Bicycle Project.

I travelled out to Makeni (Bombali District) where Isata is based to meet her and see the shop. We hit it off and ended up seeing each other a few times after that, including going for a (long!) ride together – which was a real highlight for me.

I was humbled and inspired to hear how she got into bikes and how she is trying to get more females riding bikes.

Isata Sisters Bike Shop

Her business is complementary to her riding. Asa Sierra Leone’s first female mechanic, she is breaking stereotypes and working hard to build up a business that might support her and her family. Just as she was initially helped by Village Bicycle Project to get started, Isata is also paying it forward. She has trained up another female mechanic (who Isata mentored) who also now has her own shop – the second female-owned bike shop, as well.

Isata is 26 and has had her Makeni bike shop business ‘Istata’s Sister Shop’ for three years now. She was able to start the workshop due to a microcredit scheme and in collaboration with Village Bicycle Project.

How did she get into bikes?

When Istata was in school, she would rent other kids bikes to learn how to ride. Despite having no bike of her own, she was talent scouted at a local high school sports carnival when a coach saw her in a bike race. He was impressed by her natural ability and speed – and wanted to see more.

And so she started racing. This was a lonely and unforgiving time, but it did give her valuable experience. In her first race, she was the only female. In her second race, there were three females and she came 2nd. In her third race, she was (again) the only female riding against 18 males – and she finished 10th overall. People started to notice her results and consistency.

She made it onto the National team and has never looked back. She has been the National Elite Female champion since 2006.

Overcoming negative cultural beliefs.

When she rides, Istata is challenging long-held local cultural beliefs that riding a bike is taboo for females. Many still believe that if a female rides a bike, they won’t be able to have a baby. This belief has prevented many girls from taking up riding.

When she first started riding, it was a concern that Isata herself had to face.

Isata loves riding, but was remaindered continuously by others that riding was not for women.

It was a problematic mind-trap to shake.

She found it hard to fully believe it, especially as she already had a ten-year-old son. So she had an inkling that those old views were not correct – but they were so prevalent and so constant!

It was only when a friend showed Isata profiles of some of the UK’s top elite female track and race cyclists who have children. This was all the convincing Isata needed.

Bravely, Isata is a very positive role model to encourage other females to get into cycling. She convincingly uses her experience as evidence when she talks to girls, families and community members and she addresses traditional cultural view head-on. She uses the fact that she has a 10-year-old son and a bike business to challenge limiting local beliefs about girls and bikes.

But for females, riding bikes in Sierra Leone is hard.

The most challenging thing for the female riders is that they don’t have bikes. Isata is the only female rider in Makeni who has a bike. She and the other female riders don’t have sponsors so cannot afford to buy the bikes they need. To this end, Isata continues to work tirelessly.

Isata – we celebrate you!

Isata loves her bike and loves her bike mechanic business. Despite great adversity, she is doing all she can to promote women’s cycling in Sierra Leone.

For these (and many other reasons), I’d like to acknowledge and celebrate Isata this IWB 2020. She is the epitome of all that IWD stands for and a fantastic role model for us all.

We wish you the best of luck – both on and off the bike!

If you would like to contact or support Isata, her bike shop or her riding – please email Nina via the contacts page to be put in touch.

09/12/201901/01/2020

AARE – Australian Association of Research in Education 2019 Conference

The Australia Association for Research in Education (AARE) annual national conference was held in Brisbane this week.

I was supposed to be in Cape Town (South Africa) presenting at two conferences: The 2019 New Materialist Reconfigurations of Higher Education Conference (Dec 2-4th 2019)and then straight after that conference Pedagogies in the Wild – the 3^rd South African Deleuze & Guattari Conference on 4-6^th December.

But I withdrew due to rising safety concerns UWC was shut down following heated local protests against gender-based violence, rape and femicide during the recent World Economic Forum that continued to escalate.

What is AARE?

AARE is Australia’s premier network for educational researchers. A key aim for AARE is to inform and improve policy and practice in education – and share these insights with other interested parties.

AARE blog is where experts share opinions, raise questions and explore education themes and issues.
AARE has an impressive range of special interest groups (SIGs).
The annual conference is the most popular AARE offering. Each year, local educational professionals from Australia and around the world come together to network, share ideas and hear about the latest educational research, projects and approaches. Here are some keynote presentations from past conferences and some past papers.

AARE 2019 Conference

The theme for this conference was ‘Education for a Socially Just World.

The sessions on offer are extensive (dare I say overwhelming?).

The truncated program of abstract titles only alone is 274 pages – click here.

The complete program (full abstracts) is a whopping 1162 pages – click here.

So many great sessions to choose from – and some very big names.

As I am a researcher working with New Materialisms, I definitely wanted to go to and see independent (New Materialist) scholar Bronwyn Davies.

In order to save my sanity, time and effort I just decided to stick with seeing what the Post- Structural Theory SIG had on offer – and then go to any other sessions/speakers who caught my eye.

Here, in no particular order are some of my hot tips for AARE 2019 sessions:

Sarah Healy (Melbourne Uni), Alli Edwards (Monash Uni), Alicia Flynn (Melbourne Uni). Welcome to the Playtank! Re-_____ing research.
David Bright (Monash Uni). Qualitative inquiry and Deleuze and Guattari’s minor literature: In which I consider verisimilitude as a criterion for judging the quality of qualitative writing with reference made to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse 5 albeit not really in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore. (I went to this session and it was amazing! It ended up winning the Best Session Award 2019 for the whole conference – and rightly so!).
Parlo Singh (Griffith Uni) and Gabrielle Ivinson (Manchester Metropolitan Uni, UK). Radical Inclusion Research in/with Schools Serving High Poverty Communities.
Sarah E. Truman (Melbourne Uni), David Ben Shannon (Manchester Metropolitan Uni, UK). Queer textualities and temporalities: speculating-with Alpha Centauri.
Lucinda McKnight (Deakin Uni), Melissa Wolfe (Monash Uni) and Bronwyn Davies (Independent scholar). Is new materialism incompatible with social justice? Panel Discussion with Professor Bronwyn Davies.
Maria Ejlertsen (Griffith Uni). “I don’t fit in, I fit out”: Enabling more-than inclusive spaces for student belonging and engagement with school through attention to more-than-human entanglements of spacetimematter.

I went for the full three days and to as many sessions as I could (these were just a few).

I also went to the below session which was the first in a series of AARE Post-Structuralist SIG Event Series feat. Professor Bronwyn Davies funded by AARE Poststructural Theory SIG Major Grant 2019. See abstract below.

Exploring the poetics and the ethics of new materialist inquiry: Professor Bronwyn Davies

As researchers, our task is to get inside the processes of those materialisations of the world that we encounter (where encounter is not a collision but a mutual affecting and being affected); it is to find or generate the concepts that will enable us to see those encounters not in normative, already-known terms, but in ways that open up new possibilities for sensing and responding, for becoming sense-able and response-able. That is the ethics of new materialism.

And what of the poetics? New materialist research is necessarily playful. It crosses disciplinary boundaries, messing those boundaries up; it works with new and emergent philosophical concepts, bringing them to life through art, poetry, literature; it enters into the very specificity of sensual existence as it is caught in a moment of spacetime and simultaneously opens up, or finds its way into life itself. Through such explorations it seeks to break loose from old dogmas, old methods, old binaries—all the paraphernalia of a normalized set of thoughts and practices that place the individual human above and separate from the world, and that constrain research through the repetition of the already-known. It seeks to open up thought, giving space to emergence of new ways of understanding, new ways of becoming, throwing off the shackles of the clichéd conventions of rationality and order.

In the workshop following this paper, I will present one or more of my own explorations that begin with where I am, or slip right into the middle, and then reflect on what was involved in going there. What re-conceptualising was involved? What new practices? What ethics? What poetics? I will then open up that exploration with the audience, inviting them to shift from being audience to becoming participants, giving them an opportunity to talk and write about something that matters to them in their encounters with more-than-human relationality, that called/calls on their sense-ability and response-ability.

09/11/201904/12/2019

Adelaide Bike Art Trail

Bike art trails have been featured previously on this blog in various conceptions.

They include Dubbo’s unique Animals on Bikes paddock art tourist trail in NSW and London’s interactive community bike art installation Bow Bells Ring by Colin Priest.

For this post, we travel to the beautiful city of Adelaide.

Adelaide’s Bike Art Trail project has 10 public art installations by four different artist/teams dotted around Adelaide on bike paths.

The idea behind this project is to use the art map to ride around and see each of the artworks which are located at key landmarks and tourist locations around the city.

A unique feature of this project is that some of the artworks have been incorporated into – or as – an actual bike rack as well as other being installed alongside bike paths. Although an interesting idea, I doubt cyclists would actually use the bike rack art to lock up their bikes. I’ve never seen any bikes locked up to them. The art bike racks seem more designed for aesthetics, public curiosity or as talking points. Even so, it is still good to see some colour, design and funding being invested to enhance local bike experiences.

These artworks were commissioned by the City of Adelaide, with assistance from the Government of South Australia, through Arts SA.

What are the artworks?

1. Onion Rings by Greg Healey and Gregg Mitchell (Groundplay) – Grote St.

Greg Healey and Gregg Mitchell’s simple organic form references an onion. Adelaide Central Market is an incredibly popular destination. At 1.8m high, this work commands a significant presence in the streetscape. The circular form also allows several bikes to be locked to it

2. Play Here by Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa – Hutt St.

Hutt Street is a busy urban place in Adelaide that has a strong café, art and design culture. As soon as Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa saw the site they knew it needed some bold graphics. Somewhere that was a special place to lock your bike but also somewhere that could hold its own against the backdrop of the local TAB and the two nearby banks.

Deb and Christine took their inspiration from the roads, airports, helipads and line markers of the world. They played with the predictable seriousness and colour tone that line marking usually delivers and added a few tertiary colours and a ‘you are here’ sign that reassures the person sitting on the bench close by of where they are

3. Perspective by Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa – Tandanya, – Grenfell St.

Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa wanted their bike rack/artwork to be a gentle reminder:

that someone has been here before
that time will change your perspective
that we are inexorably linked to the land and the sky.

They have installed two differently shaped bike racks. Each bike rack has a shadow of a bike sandblasted into the ground below it, as if the bike is still there. Drawn from actual shadows, the shadow images indicate different times of the day; one long shadow for early morning and the shortened shadow for early afternoon.

4. Fashionistas by Greg Healey and Gregg Mitchell Groundplay) – Rundle St.

Rundle Street is fast becoming a high street fashion shopping destination and a pair of interlinked coat hangers not only acknowledges, but celebrates this.

Shaping the hooks of the hangers into heads is intended to give them character and pay homage to Joff and Razak of Miss Gladys Sym Choon, recognised pioneers of fashion and of Rundle Street Culture.

5. Branchrack by Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa – Botanic Gardens Entrance.

The Botanic Garden is a place that celebrates plants. Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa wanted to make a bike rack using plant materials, however, that wouldn’t last very long so they opted for the next best thing: a bike rack made from bronze, cast directly from a tree branch.

When they visited the site and saw the row of existing standard bike racks, they decided to model the branch rack similar in form to the standard racks so that the artwork blend in and come as a surprise at the end of the bike rack line.

6. Camouflage by Karl Meyer (Exhibition Studios) – Adelaide Zoo.

This artwork was inspired by animal themes and connects with the diversity of animals within the zoo. Evoking childhood memories, it invites the user or passerby to ponder the relationship between ourselves and other animals. Playing with scale and colour, capturing the essence of the richness in diversity, the satin surface finish and smooth form is designed to invite touch, exploration and connection.

The work subtly embraces the cycling narrative with it spacing and orientation to the existing brightly coloured rack. Within the entry plaza the form and colour is conceived to integrate and complement the landscaping and forms. In contrast to the bright yellow bike racks within the space, the circular shapes seek to connect with bicycles wheels and animal diversity.

7. FORK! by Karl Meyer (Exhibition Studios) – Melbourne St.

The artwork seeks to connect with the contemporary cafe and food culture and as a free standing element.

The Melbourne Street precinct is a vibrant blend of retail, residential and business. The pavements bustle and the area is well known as a popular eating place offering a range of restaurants. The artwork seeks to affirm the cafe scene, to entertain and provoke enquiry and is seen to be a statement to the independence and identity of Melbourne Street as a destination within the broader context of Adelaide.

8. Ms Robinson by Tanya Court – O’Connell St.

The current resurgence of the animal print trend is captured in ‘Mrs. Robinson’. Leopard prints are used as the basis to modify standard stainless steel bike racks, transforming our impoverished urban realm with the most exotic of animal simulations.

9. Paper Bag by Michelle Nikou – North Terrace SA Museum

The location and the numerous ‘heads on plinths’ that line North Terrace generated the concept for this work. ‘Brown Paper Bag‘ is a contemporary and quirky take on ‘the establishment of success’.

Michelle Nikou considered shyness, anonymity and the feeling of not wanting to be seen – or perhaps even negating the pressure to be great when creating this work. Whilst the work does have a serious undercurrent it is also, perhaps foremost, humorous and playful. There is something most charming about little people who play with the anonymity of putting a brown paper bag over their heads–moving in circles and bumping into things.

10. Parking Pole by Michelle Nikou – Hindley St.

This work of Michelle Nikou will mirror what exists beside it but perform a ‘softening of the rules’. It was not possible to construct a conceptually difficult work in such a fast paced zone, however, in the most gentle of ways Michelle hopes to shift perception with ambience of material and humour.

Bronze always says ART and in this way the material is able to insert itself into a ‘dictated space’: changing the paradigm and presenting no rules. From the experience of having parked in the spaces just near this zone, Michelle realised they require some inspection to avoid a fine. Adding to the mix of that inspection is a blank – a blank parking pole and signs made from traditional artists’ materials, it has no instruction on it and therefore remains a space to project oneself on to, appreciable in today’s graphically overloaded world.

Details of each artwork from City of Adelaide blog.

10/10/201901/06/2021

The New Materialist’s Garden – PhD Study Retreat

Lately, I’ve been craving extra time and space to explore New Materialist more generatively, At uni, the time is limited and often, more senior academics take-over theory session. .. and the HDRers still left with answers.

So instead of relying on supervisors, I decided to invite five trusted New Materialist and Posthumanist PhD friends for a day-long study group/workshop in my garden where we could all collaborate to create and share knowledge.

I planned the day so there was room for sharing, discussion, thinking, writing and activities -and also time to do some gardening! I had organized a full-day program (see below).

Each participant nominated an NM tropic to share/teach the group.

Everyone brought a plate of food to share for lunch and we had a lunchtime visit and extra special performance by my musician friend Nix, who is a Quandamooka woman. Unreal!

All PhD led and PhD driven!

The New Materialist’s Garden Invite

Here’s the invite I sent out:

New Materialism is an umbrella term for a range of theoretical perspectives that share a re-turn focus on matter. Recently, feminist New Materialisms (fNM) has gained momentum due to a unique consideration for the agency of all matter. In fNM understandings, habitual human-centric ways of thinking, doing and being are disrupted as an ethico-onto-epistemological approach emerges.

FNM is exciting, complex and emerging – and a challenge for PGs. Because it is so difficult to understand, PGs often rely on supervisors and academics as ‘experts’ for ways to understand and apply fNM. This reliance bypasses autodidactic learning. But what might be possible if the formalities and associated materialities of this power structure were disrupted and reframed? Inspired by the fNM central ethical tenet of flattening power hierarchies within and across the Academy, I am hosting The New Materialist’s Garden.

This research session is an independent, one-day, fNM theory/methodology ‘study group’ held in my garden. The garden provides an alternative ‘learning context’ that deliberately disrupted and displaced traditional notions about academic knowledge, performances, educational spaces and who is ‘an expert’.

The aim of this day is to see what insights and ‘wonder’ (McLure, 2012) might emerge when HDRs collaborate to share and reframe experiences of ‘thinking-doing-being’ fNM research and what it is to be ‘experts-becoming’.

I hope this experience will help/encourage/inspire (post)grads to trouble the ways they are ‘thinking-doing-being’ theory and who are ‘research experts’.

Expert ‘queering’ is a significant shift for PG and emerging researchers to contend with, but even more so as they transition beyond candidature.

Hopefully, such reframings will not only aid in their current research, but also enable more (post)grads to view themselves as ‘experts/researchers-becoming’ rather than ‘student/candidate-unchanging’.

The day unfolding

A few snippets of the day unfolding:

03/08/201903/10/2019

We established a Feminist New Materialisms Special Interest Group at Griffith Uni

The theoretical framing I am using for my bicycle-education PhD is feminist New Materialisms (fNM). Actually, it is more than just a philosophical perspective and as a doctoral researcher, I have to understand this ethico-onto-epistemological approach super well in order to apply it to my PhD.

I am lucky that my supervisor Dr Sherilyn Lennon is already immersed in this field and has been an invaluable resource and guide in unpacking FNM complexities.

In a recent meeting, I said to Sherilyn that I wanted/needed more time to process and experiment with fNM approaches. I asked her if there was any academic Special Interest Groups (SIG) she knew that I could join. She had been part of an informal fNM SIG previously, but it had disbanded due to lack of official support. So, the opportunity and need was there to establish an official fNM reading/discussion group at Griffith Uni.

Success! We now have an official FNM SIG at Griffith!

Sherilyn is my convenor mentor. We applied to Griffith Institute of Educational Research (GIER) for support and were successful.

What did we do at the first fNM SIG?

We plan to start with a monthly reading and discussion group and then see what organically happens as opportunities present and requests are made.

Our first meeting was on Thursday 1st August 2019 and we had 12 attendees.

The first meeting was semi-structured with the discussion focus being: The emergence of feminist New Materialisms.

The two stimulus resources were:

Reading: Pierre, E. S. (2014). A brief and personal history of post qualitative research: Toward “post inquiry”. Journal of curriculum theorizing, 30(2).
Podcast: Click on link to access audio. New materialism by Karen Sellberg. Number 11. April 2016. Queensland School of Continental Philosophy.

We started with a welcome and an introduction of attendees: name, connection to Uni and how we plugged into fNM – and an acknowledgment that ‘matter matters’ to set the scene.

We wanted to keep the discussion open to whatever came up, so we had three questions (traffic light ) for people to think about and write their answers down on coloured post-its. Teachers call this a ‘think, pair, share’ activity, which is great because everyone contributes individual ideas to the collective discussion.

Here are our traffic (green = enabling, yellow= interesting, red =constraining) light questions and responses.

Red responses
Orange responses
Green responses
‘Traffic light’ questions

Then we formed smaller groups to share and discuss our answers – and whatever else bubbled up.

Each group discussed different aspects and ideas.

We put all the stick notes on the wall to create a gallery walk so we could pass by and read other people’s thoughts and ideas. It was a way to see what other groups discussed and it was super interesting to see what other people were wrestling with.

Sherilyn pulled one idea off the wall for the whole group to discuss in more detail.

The time went so quick!

Sherilyn and I wanted the meeting to honour central fNM tenets – like being open to change and what emerges in a moment. I also really like the idea of not just discussing ideas, but also actively and collaboratively producing something original (gallery wall) that did not exist before.

It is very FNM to recognise and (re)produce matter that can only be created in that very particular ‘entangled’ moment made up of the room, ideas, bodies, histories, location, identities, artefacts, concepts and all the other processes and practices that made the meeting what it was.

The meeting was a great start and we got very positive feedback.

It will take a few meetings to get into the groove, but I like having a semi-structured activity (with an collective production) that can then opened up and modified as the groups see fit.

We will be having one meeting each month for the rest of 2019 and I am very much looking forward to it!

A massive big thank you to all the participants and to GIER for their support.

Overview of feminist New Materialisms

Over the past 20 years, New Materialism has become an umbrella term used to represent a range of theoretical perspectives that share the re-turn to a focus on matter. It is an emerging theoretical field that encompasses four main streams: Speculative Realism, Object-oriented ontology (OOO), Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and feminist New Materialisms (fNM).

In the last 15 years in particular, fNM have gained considerable attention as a consequence of a unique approach to considering the agency of all matter. In using such understandings habitual human-centric ways of thinking, doing and being are disrupted as an ethico-onto-epistemological approach emerges. This approach is capable of bringing together multiple disciplines as it redistributes agency through material, discursive and affective forces.

European Universities (in particular Utrecht Uni which has a New Materialism Research Centre) have enthusiastically adopted fNM and are currently the most active researchers in the field. While Australia has a growing pool of fNM scholars, a similar uptake is yet to be seen here. This is surprising considering that the movement has been primarily driven by a number of internationally-celebrated Australian feminist scholars including Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook, Vicki Kirby, Bronwyn Davies and Jane Kenway.

As an emerging methodology, fNM is being taken prominently in the field of educational research. Those working in this field are contributing significant insights while laying the foundations for a profound shift in the way we come to understand educational issues, teacher education, and professional and educational practice-based learning.

At Griffith, we have a number of academics working with ANT, but few engaging with fNM. My supervisor, Dr Sherilyn Lennon, is publishing in this space and I am using feminist New Materialist thinking in my PhD. Given the excitement and emerging nature of this way of thinking, a fNM SIG at Griffith University provides an opportunity to directly engage in the discussion and lead a feminist New Materialist Research Group that will brings together PhD Candidates, academics from Griffith and other institutions, scholars and interested parties to more deeply, critically, creatively and actively engage with fNM. The field of FNM is still being chartered. This makes it an emergent and dynamic space in which to be researching.

The aim of this fNM SIG is to:

To build a vibrant and productive community of FNM researchers and professionals who cross-pollinate ideas while growing new research projects
To participate and contribute in this emergent theoretical field
To bring together researchers with trans-disciplinary and cross-institutional knowledge as a means of creating hybrid rigour
To support GU HDR candidates who are using FNM thinking
To grow research, researchers and research practices and networks
Establish Griffith/GIER as active in the FNM space
Leverage and extend Australian feminist scholarship

24/06/201903/07/2019

South African Bicycle Portraits: Stephanie Baker

Bicycle Portraits - Stephanie Baker (South Africa). Bicycles Create Change.com 24th June, 2019. — Image: Nic Groble *Bicycle Portraits*

Bike riders are a wonderful reflection of the society in which they live. Globally, there are myriad cultures, styles, approaches and lifestyles, just as there are bike riders and bikes.

It is rare gain access to the lifeworlds of bike riders elsewhere. But this is what Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Groble’s South African Bicycle Portraits project provides.

Bicycle Portraits is a creative 2-year project that showcases everyday South African locals and their bicycles. Through photos Stan and Nic took while riding around South Africa and meeting local bike riders, it reveals who rides, why they ride, and why so few South Africans choose the bicycle as a primary mode of transport.

It was ambitious and simple in its conception, yet community-minded in execution.

For many South Africans, bicycles are the only transport option.

Today, Bicycle Portraits has more than 500 portraits compiled over three years. Stan and Nic have cycled over 10,000 kilometers in order to complete their collection.

It is a wonderful expose and homage to South African bicycle subculture.

It is a fascinating insight into the diverse societal, historical and cultural characteristics that make up the eclectic RSA community.

Bicycle Portrait – Stephanie Baker

Vimeo: Bicycle Portraits – Stephanie Baker

Stephanie is an 82 and ¾ year old Pretorian local, who rides her bike a kilometre uphill every other day.

In addition to being a portrait participant, Stephanie was the only personality that Stan and Nic also made a short video about (see below).

And you can see why.

Most touching is that bike riding has given Stephanie a very particular view of how cycling improves ‘public relations’ and how it helps her connect with the locals.

Unsurprisingly, Stephanie’s wholesome outlook which she aptly describes, has been viewed over 14.7 thousand times.

Stephanie is a wonderful reminder that you are never too old to enjoy riding a bike.

Bicycle Portraits – Final Result

Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler are publishing their best 165 portraits and stories selected from over 500 images they’ve collected during their 2-year journey.

The selected final portraits are included in 3 volumes. Each book also has includes different 55 stories and two essays – one essay by a local South African and the other by major international cycling figure.

The three books have been produced in collaboration with other local artists. The books are designed by Gabrielle Guy. Also, celebrated South African artist Gabrielle Raaff had created an individual hand-painted watercolor map (based on Google Maps) to indicate where portraits was taken. The final product is impressive (see below).

What a wonderful project to showcase the diversity and characters that make up the unique South African bicycle culture. I would love to see more project from around the world like this!

17/05/201920/05/2019

Bike Shop Artist Residency

I love seeing art in bike shops.

Bikes and Art just go together.

It is a pairing that makes sense – like bikes and dogs, or bikes and coffee, or bikes and sunshine (*sigh*).

Free Cycles Community Bike Shop is in Missoula, (Montana, USA).

This shop is already a stand out example of a grassroots bike shop that offers a wide range of services, programs and events, including music, performances, theatre, food/organics, trivia, and film nights – in addition to its other bike-related workshops, community events, fundraising, education and outreach programs. Phew!

Free Cycles has a long history of supporting local and visiting artists by providing a performance space for their ongoing creative and artistic program.

To add to this, Free Cycles initiated an Artist Residency Program.

Such a great idea!

Biking is a creative act for many people.

Aside from being a great use of space, resources and networks, having a local artist in a bike shop is a great way to cross-pollinate, motivate and actively support community integration, extension and diversity. Very cool!

Video: Path Less Pedaled

Overview

This project facilitate the creation of art at Free Cycles Community Bike Shop in Missoula for public exhibition/interaction, with used bicycle parts from Free Cycles and recycled materials donated by Home ReSource.

The Artist in Residence Program create a more dedicated interaction between artist and place; practice and environment; art and bicycle; sculpture and community.

What is the artists program?

The Artist in Residence Program at Free Cycles is a new initiative to connect Artists with the Missoula community through the love of cycling.

Artists are invited through a public art call, and when selected may spend up to one month in the warehouse studio.

Here Artists are granted the time, space, materials, and equipment to create.

Artist participants are able to source materials from the thousands of donated bikes in stock on the Free Cycles property, as well as donated and reclaimed construction materials from local materials giving partner Home ReSource.

Upon completion of their residency Artists in Residence are asked to provide one workshop day to staff and volunteers, one workshop day to be offered free of charge to the public, and one work of art suitable for installation on the Free Cycles 2 acre property.

In its initial year the program is set to offer residencies to four local artists.

The program’s goal is to be able to offer artists fair compensation for their educational work and provide a stipend for their time in residence with hopes that future funding can grow these amounts to seek artists in all stages of their careers.

Bike Shop Artist Residency. Bicycles Create Change.com. 17th May, 2019.

Why initiate an artists program?

The planning process for this project has been happening informally for many years.

By offering a community space, that encourages citizen interaction, Artists are attracted organically out of their love for creative process.

For more than two decades Artists have been creating with materials from Free Cycles, often in their own shops but sometimes on site.

With the recent purchase of the two-acre property and 28,000-square feet of building space this year has provided opportunity to formalize our artist oriented programming and increase our community workshop offerings.

This program will ensure the future of the Free Cycles warehouse as a permanent part of the Free Cycles Community Bike Shop’s engagement at a pivotal time in the property’s future.

Who is ‘MIST’?

MIST is the Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation. MIST is a citizen-based non-profit organization in Missoula, Montana. They have a strong focus on making walking, bicycling, and public transit more complete, accessible and enjoyable.

They work to create a system of movement that is safe, equitable and environmentally sound. Four programs work towards these goals, of which Free Cycles Community Bicycle Shop is one.

Free Cycles Community Bicycle Shop seeks to create a healthy community through a wide range of strategies.

The goal of Free Cycles is to help Missoula, Montana transition to a more sustainable transportation system while simultaneously setting a strong example for other places.

Through these programs will help individuals collaborate and work to be active stewards of the community with an emphasis on social and environmental justice. The idea is to work towards this mission through education, empowerment, and engagement.

The education programs strive to give people the knowledge to maintain their bicycle independently, use it safely, and eventually share their skills with others.

By increasing the accessibility of human powered transportation, the organisers seek to directly empower individuals from all walks of life with the ability to move themselves.

Free Cycle Projects

These projects focus on community engagement to facilitate a sense of collective responsibility, a strong sense of place, and human connectivity.

Free cycles has had approximately 200,000 total participants to date. There have been 38,000 bikes donated since 1996 of which about half gone out as free bikes while about one quarter have been recycled and one quarter have been repurposed. About 6,000 have taken the BikeWell safety, maintenance, and orientation class.

All Images: Free Cycle website or @freecyclemissoula (IG). This post was adapted from an article first published on Indiegogo.

28/03/201920/04/2019

Bow Bells Ring

Bow Bells. Bicycles Create Change.com. 27th March 2019.

The other day I was riding my bike along the foreshore. It was a busy day, with cyclists, pedestrians and families all out enjoying the sunshine. It made me happy and I thought how nice it would be to interact more with the environment and people around me.

It reminded me of the Bow Bells Ring project by artist Colin Priest, which was an installation commissioned as part of the 2011 London Olympics.

I really love this creative and community-minded bicycle project.

It perfectly captures everything this blog holds near and dear. So for those who have not heard of this project before – here is ye olde favorite community bike project gem. Enjoy!

What is Bow Bells Ring?

The idea is simple. UK artist Colin Priest collected 100 bicycle bells of all kind of sizes, shapes and loudness and installed them strategically along well-used public paths.

Each bell was attached to a small wooden stick and had its number and a little blurb detailing the project.

Then, each bell was installed at critical experimental points along a public route linking the Greenway, Capital Ring towpath and Stratford High Street. Visitors could download an app to get a tour map of all the bell locations.

Cyclists, pedestrians and locals could ring the bells and interact with the project however they liked. Priest found that some of the bells were modified by passers-bys (de/increasing loudness).

This project not focuses on bicycles and active transportation, but also uses recycling and low-tech approaches. It is innovative and encourages community engagement and an appreciation for the local environment.

What more could you want in a community bike art installation?!

The aim was to highlight safety and interactivity, promote use of local public spaces, increase awareness for biking and community interaction, and to bring some happy cheer to the area.

The installation followed the main bikeways through some gorgeous parklands, along a river and through the urban green spaces. The bells were also thoughtfully situated in order to reflect the environments, the surrounding locals who live there and to encourage a little more participation as people moved through the social and environmental surrounds.

Below is a video of Colin Priest explaining his project.

This project was commissioned by View Tube Art, as part of Bicycle Wheel for the CREATE11 Festival. Bow Bells was funded by the Arts Council England.

This idea would be a lovely addition to any bicycle pathway.

I’d like to see more interactive bicycle-inspired community art installations like this.

Here’s to hoping!

All images are stills taken from the two View Tube videos included in the blog.

27/02/201905/03/2019

A bicycle prayer-wheel projector in the Himalaya

Alexander Csoma de Koros was a Hungarian traveller/explorer who traveled to Tibet in 1820 where he learnt the language and culture.

Csoma ended up being a cross-cultural pioneer for both countries and forged a long-standing language, cultural and learning exchange between the two nations which still endures today.

Student Storybook of Csoma’s LifeDownload

To commemorate Csoma’s spirit of cultural support and exchange, Hungarian conceptual tech lab Kitchen Budapest has created a low-tech kinetic image projector called Csoma’s Wheel.

Csoma’s Wheel is a bicycle-based installation that uses traditional Tibetan prayer wheel design as the base structure to create an electronic art/image projector.

The LED flashing prayer-wheel is made from two bicycle wheels, bike and other parts, LEDs and a concrete block. When the wheel is rotated by hand, the spinning generates enough electricity to power a strip of LEDs that shine light through a perforated screen or drum. From these LEDs, a basic animated image is projected onto the concrete block.

The designers have loftily claimed Csoma’s Wheel to be “the first ‘new media treasure’ of the Himalayas”.

This project has been completed and is installed in the Csoma’s Room (also called Csoma’s Santuary), which is charity school supported by Csoma’s Room Foundation in the Zanglar in the Himalaya. This foundation supports locals by supplying funds, skills and volunteers to help revive a local Palace, repair Bhuddist temples, and build schools and homes.

The homes and schools are all completely solar-powered.

This NGO uses sustainable local materials (adobe bricks), revives and utilises traditional construction and handicraft skills, supports local economic and labour/skill (income-generating) opportunities, builds more schools and homes and provides solar power.

Csoma’s Room Education Report 2008Download

In keeping with Alexander’s spirit, there is a strong emphasis on promoting local heritage and using local Zanglar skills, practices and materials to reduce reliance on high tech, resource-dependant, imported materials.

The bicycle prayer-wheel projector was installed to complement the recent completion of major construction to Csoma’s Sanctuary, which is visited by many international visitors each year.

This is certainly one of the more unique and innovative ways to use bicycles!

All images courtesy of Csoma’s Room

27/01/201918/02/2019

The Orange Bike Project in the Phillipines

For many years, World Bicycle Relief (WBR) has supplied bicycles to some of the world’s most vulnerable people to help increase access to education, healthcare and income-generation opportunities. WBR has a number of corporate sponsors and partnerships. This story details a unique collaboration between WBR, ING Bank and World Vision, called the Orange Bicycle Project. This story comes courtesy of WBR and serves as a reminder that bicycles really do create change. Enjoy! NG.

Dutch financial institution ING has built their corporate purpose around “empowering people to stay a step ahead, in life and in business.” While ING remains committed to this purpose in their day-to-day banking work, they also wanted to integrate it into their corporate giving efforts.

And if they could find a way to honor their Dutch bicycling heritage at the same time, even better! The organization did just that by developing a sustainable transportation relief program: the Orange Bike Project.

The Orange Bike Project in the Phillipines. Bicycles Create Change.com. 27th Jan, 2019. — Image: World Bicycle Relief

ING collaborated with World Bicycle Relief (WBR) and World Vision Philippines to bring bicycles to children living in remote locations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand.

The project is modeled after WBR’s Bicycles for Educational Empowerment Program (BEEP) and aspires to raise enough funds over five years to build and distribute 5,000 bicycles to students who must walk long distances to school every day.

WBR’s educational programs in Africa have demonstrated that reducing students’ travel time to school helps improve attendance and performance.

Bicycle-riding students are more likely to stay in school, improving their career prospects and future income potential as well. As Mark Newman, CEO of ING Asia, says, “We hope that the ING Orange Bike project will be able to create a lasting impact that empowers the students, their families and the community to keep moving forward in life.”

The project’s orange ING-branded Buffalo Bicycle is specially designed for rough, rural terrain and can carry loads up to 100 kg – making it useful for the student’s family to transport crops and goods to the market when school is not in session.

As of December 2016, 3,200 bicycles have been distributed through the Orange Bike Project. The program’s impact is carefully monitored by a local implementing agency, and the results have been spectacular!

In several beneficiary schools in the Philippines, attendance has increased by at least 33% and grades by at least 51%. The bicycles have also helped recipient families bring more goods to market, increasing their income.

ING has plans to raise $200,000 annually to continue the program through 2018. Employee fundraising groups like the ING Orange Bike Cycling Challenge have helped ING reach its goal by raising $75,000 in 2016. The program has benefited from the enthusiastic support of ING employees and friends who all share the organization’s commitment to empowering individuals.

Shayne Prashan, ING employee and team leader for the ING Orange Bike Cycling Challenge, was motivated to fundraise for the project because of the emotional enlightenment it offered him. “It’s about the only superpower that makes us human: empathy.”

Shayne says. “It invites us on one of the greatest and most courageous adventures of our lives: to step into someone else’s shoes to understand their struggles and to help them walk through life with confidence and faith.”