How Foundation grants have funded bike lights, bike recycling and employability training, removing the barriers that keep people from cycling.
Ask what stops someone cycling and the answer is rarely the bike itself. It's the dark evening that ends a club's season early, the cost of a decent bike or set of lights, or simply having nowhere to go once you can ride. Four small grants have chipped away at each of those barriers in turn.
Lighting up the winter
Ben Wyvis Cycle Club in Ross-shire runs junior club rides every Monday night through the summer, but the club used to stand the sessions down as the evenings drew in. A Foundation equipment voucher of £350, matched by a grant from Highland Community Energy Society, paid for a bank of loanable bike lights and helmet mounts for up to 22 children. Wayne Browne, from the club, explains why that mattered: bike lights can be an expensive purchase for some parents, so a shared pool means qualified leaders can keep taking children out safely all year. Since the lights arrived, Monday night rides around Contin Woods have drawn bigger turnouts of both parents and juniors, several of whom had never ridden after dark before.
Cornwall Bicycle Project CIC had the same problem further south. The Cornwall-based social enterprise runs off-road sessions teaching navigation, bike handling and night-riding safety to children aged 6 to 16, working with two qualified coaches to reach up to 15 riders a week. A £250 Foundation award went toward the lights that let the sessions run through winter, reaching children identified through local schools and a youth project as well as five Syrian refugee girls through a linked programme. The club's own account of the impact goes well beyond the cycling itself:
"These night sessions have ticked many boxes: mental, physical wellbeing, social inclusion and confidence building. We learnt about cycling in the dark, preparing for your night ride, which lights to choose and other important safety elements."
Removing the bike as the barrier
For some, the barrier isn't a missing light but a missing bike. Nottingham Bikeworks runs a cycling hub reaching south Nottingham and Rushcliffe, offering repairs, sales, courses and events built around the belief that everyone should have access to cycling and the skills to look after their own bike. As both a Foundation grant recipient and a Continuum partner, Nottingham Bikeworks puts unwanted cycling clothing and equipment from around the country back into use, keeping that resource flowing to people who'd otherwise go without.
A way in to something bigger
Sometimes the bike is just the start. Recyke-a-bike in the Forth Valley began as a small bike recycling social enterprise before growing into a job club that uses bike recycling as work experience, alongside cycling outreach and training services aimed at people facing barriers to employment, education and volunteering. The organisation found that time outdoors made a real difference to the groups it worked with, so it built a pool of camping equipment to run employability training that included the John Muir Award: discovering a wild place, exploring it, conserving it and sharing the experience. Foundation funding helped extend that support, letting participants build a fire, camp overnight and cook outdoors as part of the training.
Everyone who took part completed the John Muir Award. What stood out most, the organisation reported, was the improvement in confidence and social skills, and the number of participants exploring places they'd never had the opportunity to visit before.
A light, a spare bike, a place to camp: none of it is much on its own, but together it's the difference between cycling stopping at the club gate and going somewhere. If you run a project doing similar work, find out how to apply.