Three years ago, in partnership with Team Hackney, we developed a healthy lifestyles programme which aimed to give local hard-to-reach communities access to cycle training and affordable bikes and accessories. We moved the focus of our family clubs from schools to housing estates, worked with tenants and residents associations to promote cycling as a way of improving people's mobility, physical activity and self-confidence. We combined our cycling promotion sessions with provision of healthy snacks and drinks.
On several estates we are following up our initial sessions with monthly training refresher sessions and bike maintenance, to help people keep up their cycling once they've started. The main reason for people to stop cycling is a puncture, so teaching people how to fix these is a top priority!
In 2006-7 we set ourselves an ambitious programme to try and replicate some of what we had achieved at Sir Thomas Abney. We called the project 'Independent Schools', aiming to help schools set up similar schemes to our Rainbow Programme. The original idea had developed before Transport for London became the main funders of cycle training in London, at a time when grants from here, there and everywhere had to be cobbled together to try and keep cycle training going.
At these schools we provided cycle training for younger children, and a small amount of cycle training for adults. However, we just didn't have the time to devote to building up the necessary contacts and structures, and whilst the direct cycle training took place, most schools didn't get up and going independent cycling projects.
There was a notable exception. Tyssen school, with an exceptionally keen and go-ahead Headteacher, recruited our cycle trainer Tim Evans to become their Sustainable Transport Manager, and developed a large whole school cycle training programme, paid for and managed by the School. They were able to make use of the Cycle Pool of bikes we had established there, and have gone from strength to strength. Alison Butler is now the lead cycle trainer, and has expanded a the provision to include an after school cycle training session for mums from the local Charedi community.
This year, in conjunction with the invaluable support of a teacher at the school, we have set up an after school Cycle Club for girls at Clapton Girls School.
In the Autumn of 2006, again responding to an initial request from a teacher at the school, we ran a 6 week cycle training course at Yesodey Hatorah Junior Boys Schools, literally just up the road and around the corner from Sir Thomas Abney. The boys plumped for the 'obstacle course' option - learning control skills in the playground using a fun obstacle course that we had initially devised for an event in Victoria Park. A stall was set up at 'home time' and free cycling literature and give away fluorescent anklets snapped up. This was an ideal time to chat to parents about the cycle training, and we even recruited a Mum keen to train as a cycle trainer! This initial course was followed by another this last Autumn 2007
Typically we will train beginner cyclists, offering the use of the loan of a bike from our pool. In this way some 40 - 50 children and adults receive cycle training, with every beginner so far being able to balance and pedal around at the end of the session! We usually have two 'Dr. Bikes' to attend to fixable bike repairs, for which there is always a lengthy queue.
We take advance bookings for the morning sessions, but try and leave some afternoon sessions unbooked and so available to passing people who would like to try out cycling on the spur of the moment.
We also have a stall full of free maps, leaflets and other cycling literature, and someone to whom people can ask any cycling questions they might have.