Bicycles Create Change

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.

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 edits and hyperlinks added and footnotes removed to aid short-form continuity. Images from Artlink unless attributed.

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.

09/08/202012/10/2020

Dissident Bicycles (Part 1): Ai Weiwei’s ‘Forever’

For August, we have a 5-part series written by Laura Fisher exploring how bicycles are used as a dissident object in contemporary art. Laura Fisher is a post-doctoral research fellow at Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney). Originally published in long format in Artlink, the five projects Laura details are examples not only of how bicycles create positive social (and other) change, but how this achieved utilizing the arts and performance. In this first instalment, Laura describes the importance and impact of one of Ai Weiwei’s most iconic pieces ‘Forever’. Enjoy! NG.

The bicycle as dissident object: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Forever’

One of the centrepieces of Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei at the National Gallery of Victoria is a fresh iteration of Ai’s Forever sculpture. Located in the foyer, the sculpture consists of a towering arch of over 1,500 interconnected bicycles, all uniformly produced to a minimalist design. The Forever series is now among Ai’s most known works, having been exhibited in many configurations in museums and public spaces in London, Taiwan, Taipei, Venice and Toronto and elsewhere. The namesake is China’s Yong Jiu (which translates as“Forever”) brand of bicycle.

Established in the 1940s, the prized Forever brand dominated China’s cycling culture for several decades before the car became more widely used. For Ai there is a tainted nostalgia about the Forever bicycle. In the remote village where he was raised after his father – an enlightened and popular poet – was exiled from Beijing, the bicycle was not only needed for travel but for transporting things. It was also out of reach to all but the well-off, a high status object of intense desire for a child like Ai living in poverty.

In the first version of the work (in 2003) Ai suspended real Forever bicycles in a circle, and removed the chains, handlebars, pedals and seats. Eliminating these features set him on a path of abstraction, which in turn allowed him to introduce ambiguity to the object and play with patternation. Subsequent versions of the work left the readymade quality of the original behind and embraced a manufactured aesthetic, with the sculptures acquiring spectacular architectural proportions.

The bicycles seem to be self-propagating as grand crystalline structures, yet they are strikingly immobilised: ossified in gleaming stainless steel. In light of Ai’s ongoing critique of the constraints on liberty and individuality in China, it is hard not to interpret Forever as a potent vision of arrested movement, and its mass-produced elements as a metaphor for a particular kind of circumscribed sociality.

With Flowers

A more lo-fi object and performance that attests to the importance of bicycles (and flowers) to this critique is Ai’s With Flowers. Daily, from 30 November 2013, Ai placed fresh flowers into the basket of a bicycle leaning on a tree outside his Beijing studio gate to protest the confiscation of his passport (in 2011), and documented the bouquets on Flickr. His passport was finally returned in July 2015.

The National Gallery of Victoria installation

The National Gallery of Victoria’s installation is just the most recent in a long line of commissions and adaptations of Forever. And you might ask why the work has had such longevity. While it is no doubt a testament to Ai’s growing fame, it surely also says something about the bicycle’s symbolic currency at this historical moment.

In the coming years, the bicycle is likely to be a significant gauge of our cities’ progress towards finding a more sustainable equilibrium and it is a very tangible instance of the idea that a personal choice, when embraced en masse, can translate swiftly into extraordinary collective good. In this light, the scaled-up Forever seems to be suggestive of the grand promise associated with this disarmingly simple tool of urban transformation.

What is striking about the bicycle in the age of electronics is that it is an honest machine: its means of operating are transparent and its action truthfully felt. As Ai himself points out “They’re designated for the body and operated by your body. There are few things today that are like that”.

As a machine comprising simple cogs and wheels that efficiently convert human energy into movement, the bicycle has unique kinetic and haptic qualities that lend themselves to aesthetic investigation.

Thus, 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 – which is what we will be exploring in the next post!

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.

30/07/202027/08/2020

New Materialisms SIG: PlayTank Collective

For this session, we were delighted to have incredible minds behind the Melbourne-based PlayTank Collective – Alicia Flynn, Sarah Healy and Allie Edwards present a session entitled: Lessons from the Play Tank: Adventures in playful scholarship.

New Materialism SIG: The PlayTank Collective. Bicycles Create Change.com 30th July 2020.

Abstract

In this session, we will discuss a workshop that was created to enact NM theories and provide a playful and collaborative space to re-think, re-imagine, re-( ) research for participants at the AARE 2019 conference. Working between the disciplines of art education and design, we embraced the opportunity to create this workshop in a way that attended to the joys and curiosities that we experienced while working/playing together in a material way. This collaboration was intentionally responsive and response-able, allowing us to experience a different way of being academics together, and enabling us to create a workshop that offered the same opportunity for those joining us in our session.

We will share some of the insights from our process of creating the workshop, some highlights and images from the workshop, and pose the question we now have:

What does this workshop make possible, both for us as researchers and for the people who participated in it?

Is this a method that allows people to practice more affirmative and ethical ways of working/playing/being together?

Twitter: @PlayTankCo

Alicia Flynn @LeishFly

Sarah Healy- @eduTH1NK

Alli Edwards – @allinote

Session highlights

Sarah and Alli (and Alicia) not only presented, but also took us on an engaging 2-hour journey through their ideas, inspirations, readings, discussions and no less than two 100s (Stewart, 2010) writing activities (see image) and left us with the enticing thought:

What does this experience make possible, both for us as researchers and for the people who participated in it?

Part of the framing for this session was this incredible piece that Alicia read out:

“Imagine a pattern. This pattern is stable, but not fixed. Think of it in as many dimensions as you like – but it has more than three. This pattern has many threads of many colours, and every thread is connected to, and has a relationship with, all the others. The individual threads are every shape of life. Some – like human, kangaroo, paperbark – are known to Western science as “alive”; others, like rock, would be called “non-living”, but rock is there, just the same. Human is there, too, though it is neither the most nor the least important thread – it is one among many, equal with the others. The pattern made the whole is in each thread, and all the threads together make the whole. Stand close to the pattern and you can focus on a single thread ; stand a little further back and you can see how that thread connects to others; stand further back still and you can see it all – and it is only once you see it all that you recognise the pattern of the whole in every individual thread. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the whole is in all its parts. This is the pattern that the Ancestors made. It is life, creation, spirit, and it exists in Country” (Kwaymullina, 2005, p. 12).

*Kwaymullina, A. (2005). Seeing the light: Aboriginal law, learning and sustainable living in country. Indigenous Law Bulletin, 6(11), 12-15

For this meeting we had 2 readings:

Braidotti, R. (2009). On putting the active back into activism. New Formations, (68), 42. doi:10.3898/NEWF.68.03.200

Stewart, K. (2010). Worlding refrains. In M. Gregg & G. J. Seigworth (Eds.), The affect theory reader (pp. 337 -353). Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press.

Stewart (2010) Worlding refrains Download

Minor Design Activism(un highlighted)Download

Session note: A great question from last meeting that emerged out of the readings was: What is ‘the second corporeal turn in social theory’ referred to in Taylor and Ivinson (2013, p 666)? This question stemmed from this quote here: “Such moves reinforce earlier feminist theories (Butler 1990; Grosz 1994), and speak back to the second corporeal turn in social theory (e.g. Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Foucault 1979; Merleau-Ponty 1962, 1968; Shilling 2008) and within education (Evans, Rich, and Davies 2009; James 2000; Prout 2000; Walkerdine 2009). We indend to discuss this further!

25/07/202027/08/2020

Bicycles help the Pascua Yaqui community fight diabetes

I am always looking for stories where bicycles create positive community change. Inclusive bike-focused programs that support First Nations and minority groups is a special interest for this blog.

Previously, I have posted on programs that increase bike use, access and participation for Indigenous Australians such as:

This week, I came across a US community-based project working at the forefront of 3 critical intersecting issues: diabetes, first nations (Native American community) health and using bicycling to mitigate chronic health issues.

This project works with the Pascua Yaqui people in the US. Obesity and diabetes is a major individual and community health issue in many communities – and the Diabetes Community Empowerment Project is using bicycles to help address this issue. What an awesome project!

Who are they?

This initiative is part of Native Exercise Empowerment Project.

Since 2012, the Diabetes Community Empowerment Project has been working with the Native American community helping them move towards better health. This community sees a high incidence of diabetes and obesity and DCEP empower native people to exercise more and be role models for each other.

The programs work in resource poor communities by removing the barriers between people and the healthier, happier versions of themselves.

Starting out

The project began when James Stout (DCEP Executive Director) was training in Tucson Arizona. At the time, he was making a living as a cyclist. Having spent time riding through the reservation and working with nonprofit outside of the US, he noticed the high rate of diabetes among Native American people and wondered if there was anything he could do to help.

As someone who lives with diabetes, James was motivated to share the joy, and health, he found in riding his bike. Taking a clapped out station wagon and as many old bikes and helmets, as it could fit, James took time out from his PhD I began to work on the reservation in order to better understand the barriers between Native people and better diabetes management.

Although access to medication is an issue in many Native American communities, a lack of access to exercise and education is often equally dangerous. Through working with the healthcare team on the reservation, the program engages people with diabetes and encouraged them to try cycling with the goal of completing a El Tour de Tucson event.

3 years after it started, each of the initial riders have returned to serve as a mentor and bought friends and family with them. By 2016 the project has seen over 100 participants finished their goal event, thousands of pounds have been lost and blood glucose management has seen drastic improvement.

DCEP Mission

To research and implement peer mentored, exercise based lifestyle interventions in resource poor diabetes communities. Focusing on goal events, we aim to use community based education and exercise programs to empower people to live healthier and happier lives as well as to be changemakers in their own communities.

Moving forward

The DCEP website has not been updated in a while, so I hope this project is still ongoing! Even if it is not, the project is a great example of an how bicycles can be used to improve indiviviual and community health and well-being.

It also serves as a reminder that we need a broader, more inclusive methods of providing specialist, community-focused responses to support the needs of First Nations communities and minority groups.

All images and some content of this post sourced from DCEP.

20/07/202012/09/2020

Belize: Bikes for Caye Caulker’s Ocean Academy students

This blog prides itself on brings you stories and projects from around the world where bicycles create positive social and environmental change. It has been while since we visited Central America. Last time we were there, we looked at the growing popularity of Ciclovía de Los Domingos or Sunday bikeways. We also checked in to meet Mexico City’s first Latin American Bike Mayor, Areli Carreón and heard some reflections from our guest blogger Diana Vallejo on what it is like to be a Colombian non-rider. Today, we are heading to Belize to see how bicycles are helping support local kids not only stay in school, but also generate some income. Enjoy! NG.

Screen Shot 2020-08-25 at 5.31.00 am — Ocean Academy student Micheal. Image: Planterra Foundation

Belize is a small Caribbean country in northeastern Central America. It has many beautiful islands and atolls and is a popular tourist destination.

However, life for locals can be difficult. Belize is ranked 166 in the world based on GDP, around other lower-income countries like Lesotho, Suriname and Timor Leste.

Caye Caulker is one of Belize’s beautiful islands. Like many other islands, it has shifted from traditional life to embrace a different way of life in order to survive. Caye Caulker’s now depends on ts hospitality and tourism industry. While tourists enjoy natural environs and leisure activities, life is very different for locals.

Being such a small island, there are limited services. Previously, the Caye did not have a high school. This meant that when local children turned 12, they would have to move to the mainland if they wanted to continue their studies. This is not only financially difficult, but having a young family member away can be stressful and add extra pressure for struggling families, so many would not continue their studies and stay on the Caye. This meant there was a growing population of youths who had not completed their education.

Addressing a Critical Need

This situation is an obvious problem for the young students and families of the remote island of Caye Caulker. In many cases, it is not possible for students to travel to the mainland to receive a quality education.

This barrier leads many by the age of 12, to choose to quit school and join the workforce. Nation-wide, only 40% of secondary-aged youths are enrolled in school.

Opening a local high school – Ocean Academy

The Ocean Academy school opened in 2008 as the very first community high school on the island of Caye Caulker.

There are currently 58 students enrolled in the Academy.

Its programs aim to reduce school dropout rates and reverse the growing unemployment issue by providing hands-on and practical tourism education, in addition to the traditional curriculum.

How Planterra Foundation helped

Planeterra raised donations to fund needed bicycles and other materials for the Ocean Academy to develop a student-led bicycle tour of the island. Planeterra also connected the Ocean Academy to a market, G Adventures travellers, on some of G’s tours that visit the island.

This activity is included into some of G Adventures, and bike rentals are available for all travellers, with proceeds funding educational programs for the students at Ocean Academy.

Impact: Student-led bike tours

This project aims to provide youth on Caye Caulker with training for future employment opportunities. It is a social enterprise in tourism, giving students from Caye Caulker’s Ocean Academy the chance to practice guiding skills while giving traveller’s a unique experience on their visit to Caye Caulker.

Ocean Academy prepares students for careers relevant to island tourism and conservation science. In order to ensure the success for the new program, Planeterra supplied Ocean Academy’s Bike with Purpose program with 40 extra bikes at the beginning of the partnership.

This meant students could show tourists around, gaining valuable leadership, communication, business and tourism skills that can then be taken forward. Costs for the student-led bike tours all go to the students.

This is a wonderful example of how bicycles can be used to help support local education, families and employment opportunities. Key to this approach is integrating and enhancing already established local initiatives (the Academy) as well as addressing a need that has immediate and long-lasting positive impacts for local youths and their families.

Bicycles really do create change!

Content for this post sourced from Planterra Foundation

15/07/202025/08/2020

Congrats! Welcome to the world Nina Sarah Divine Kamara!!

Today I have some wonderful news!

Many of you know that at the start of this year, I went to Sierra Leone for my PhD girls bikes-for-education fieldwork.

I was there for three weeks and came back just before COVID-19 shut down travel.

I was based in Lunsar, which is an ex-mining community about 1.5 hours out of the capital city, Freetown.

I was living with Karim ‘Stylish’ Kamara and his fantastic partner Francess. Stylish is the Country program manager for Village Bicycle Project.

While there, I spent lots of time gathering research data with Stylish as a research participant and working with Stylish and others on VPB projects to see how bicycles featured in girl’s access to education in the local area.

I spent also lot of time with Stylish, Francess, our neighbours and community members learning as much as I could about local life, cooking, customs and talking to as many people as I could -always open to learn more.

While I was there, Francess was pregnant with Stylish and her first child.

I just received the news that Francess gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl!

Congratulations!

Both mother and baby are doing well! Hooray!!

If that is not enough cause for celebration, Stylish and Francess named their daughter Nina – after me!

What an unexpected honour!

I had no idea they were thinking of doing this and was floored when they told me.

It is such a privilege and a delight.

Welcome to the world – Nina Sarah Divine Kamara!

Lil Nina is the most adorable baby and I am so happy for both Francess and Stylish!

So, dear readers, it gives me great pleasure to officially introduce you to Nina Sarah Divine Kamara! Born July 9^th 2020.

A huge warm welcome to Lil Nina from our eclectic, diverse and internationally extended family!

10/07/202010/08/2020

Worlding: Coffee Break (Away)

Why is gender a focus for my bike research? As a female-body working, being and living in the world, how could it not be integral to how I experience the world? It is the only point of reference I have – and even when I am okay with it, others are/might not be okay with it. Here a recent example in 100 words.

While studying with coffee and a muffin, a passing, feeble man tells me to watch what I eat If I want to keep my figure. Aged care fragility meets learned compassion rising. Humanity blooms as I tell him to fuck off – in my thoughts – I think – I hope. The weight of intellect is my principal concern: criticism, expectations, conferral. Momentarily, I invest in frustration and fabrication and feel slightly better. Later, on my bike, I ride even faster. Burning the kms. Burning the candle. Burning the books. Burning the calories. Take that thesis. Take that old man. I ride on.

05/07/202018/08/2020

Got a Bicycle Diary?

Some people say making time for bike rides can be hard. But if your diary is a creative bike-inspired calendar all-in-one, then the job is not only easy, but imaginative and fun!

Making time for bike riding and art is a must.

Previously on this blog, I have shared some other of my fav bike inspired selections ranging from 5 Bikey Christmas Gifts, Trail Troll Art Installations on MTB trails, Temporary Bicycle Tattoos and the follow-up Bicycle Tattoos on THIGHS) and actual art bike rides like Melbourne’s Pink Flamingo Bike Rave (*sigh*!).

Yup, art and bikes just go together.

Below are 5 great bicycle diaries and travel journals.

Some you can still get while others were limited editions. All are the perfect place to block out happy hours on two wheels (alongside all the other things you need to get done too of course!).

Aside from having a bike theme – always check items are recycled and/or produced using sustainable and ethical practices – and support local artists where ever possible.

Keep any eye out for these in your local bookshops too (they need the business).

Or have a go at making your own!

1. Punctures & Panniers- Cycle Traveling Journal

This bike travel journal has it all! It is the brainchild of intrepid bike tourer Andre and was made possible in collaboration with artist Ania Butler. It has recycled paper and biodegradable inks. The design is clean and engaging and there is places in it to record your favourite routes, people you met, pages to doddle, log recipes, store contacts and more. This book was initiated by a kick starter and has something for every bike rider. A real gem!

Got a Bicycle Diary? Bicycles Create Change.com 5th July 2020 — Punctures & Panniers

2. Bike Art – Just Ride 2018-2019 Weekly Planner

The Bike Art On-the-Go Weekly Planner is perfect for your bag, backpack, or briefcase. This is a 17-month calendar with funky graphics. This planner is fun and thorough with plenty of time management sections that will help keep you organized. Stylish design and kooky bicycle motifs will make you smile on every page. By Amber Lotus Publishing 224 pages.

3. Ashley Hackshaw: How to turn a book into an art journal

Ashley Hackshaw (AKA Lil Blue Boo) has a blog o(f the same name) where she shares art projects and creative ideas. In this post, she shows step-by-step how you can make your own art journals using composition books. Although not specifically a bike diary – I love that her example is!

4. Bicycle (Personalized) Embroidered Notebook Cover

Quirky, creative and unique. Personalized notebook covers are so handy. The best thing is they can be reused for different diaries and notebooks. This particular cover by Sierraistanbul is an embroidered, fabric, red bicycle with a nameplate ‘Nick’ – but you can get it customised for your own/other people’s name too.

5. Inner Tube Notebook Covers

You can also check websites and places like Etsy for inner tube book and diary covers. Or have a go at making your own. Check reviews first if buying online as sizes can vary especially if you add things into your diary and it expands. Inner tubes can be tricky to work with so double-check any zips and that seams are robust. Having said that- these are great products to have as they fully fit the bike-recycled mandate!