The cycle workshop for marginalised women

Stepping into the workshop of the Bristol Bike Project can only be described as entering a bike wonderland.

Everything in sight is made out of spare bike parts; there’s a bicycle wheel where the tea mugs hang that sits like a chandelier above us, while the weekly noticeboard is pieced together from flat tyres and broken chains.

Even the entrance – just a short cycle around the back of Hamilton House, is signposted by mechanical bike flowers that adorn the porch.

It is here that the project fixes up donated and reclaimed bikes often preparing them for redistribution to disadvantaged and marginalised people in Bristol.

Inside, thanks to a network of volunteer mechanics, the project runs a variety of workshops open to the general public, including the Women and Trans night, which offers training on Monday evenings between 6pm-9pm.

This open workshop, where I visit with my bike on a recent Monday, is a woman-only space. “Bike culture does tend to be very male dominated, which can be intimidating. Mechanics in general is a male-dominated field,” Zoe Power, one of the volunteer mechanics, explains.

By providing a more comfortable environment, the hope is to make the world of bike mechanics more approachable to women, ensuring that visitors can learn key skills in mechanics in order to look after their own bikes.

Volunteers and customers share skills with one another. Co-ordinator Jo Hellier and long-standing volunteers are on hand to offer support, but customers are invited to come along, use the available tools and learn as they go along.

Listening in on the women at work (my own bike is currently running too well to start tinkering), one woman is learning the logistics of changing a bike cable while another is battling some well-set rust.  

Jo is also co-ordinator of the Freedom of Movement Scheme, a project run on Tuesday mornings for women from marginalised and underprivileged backgrounds.

The scheme is open to women who are long-term unemployed. Participants usually include refugees, women with ongoing health problems or learning difficulties, women in sheltered housing, women who are undergoing a substance abuse recovery programme or women on probation.

Zoe, who has been volunteering for the scheme since November, says the idea of the workshop is “to branch out the availability and accessibility of bike culture to people who may not otherwise have the money or the knowledge to get involved”.

There are usually four women at each session. Women are taught the basic skills necessary to change a flat tyre and adjust brakes and brake cable levers. At the end of the session they leave with a bike, a lock and lights.

As the women on Freedom of Movement often come from cultures in which cycling is not allowed after marriage or puberty, the bike is particularly symbolic of liberation, Zoe adds. The opportunity to cycle and learn new skills in the process is crucial for the group’s independence and autonomy, along with their mental health.

“I think it is quite empowering to come and learn how to fix your own bike and then get your own bike,” Jo says. “People usually leave with a feeling of pride and ownership over that bike.”

Women are invited to sign up to the scheme through the Freedom of Movement website. A full list of events at the Bristol Bike Project can be found here.