Camcycle news

This article was published in 2021, in Magazine 152.

Be a Camcycle trustee and help shape our work

Camcycle trustee Sue Edwards at the 2019 Festival of Cycling.

As we move towards the end of the year, thoughts are turning to our 2022 AGM along with new priorities for next year.

Our board of trustees plays a vital role in our governance and leadership, helping shape an organisation that sets the agenda for cycling in our region and ensuring that it is fit for the years ahead. To do this effectively we need a diverse and active board with a wide range of skills and we’d love to welcome new faces.

Please get in touch if you’d like to find out more about becoming a Camcycle charity trustee. We’ll tell you more and give you an opportunity to talk further with existing trustees about the role.

We recognise the need to improve the diversity of our board and to ensure that it reflects the community that we represent: our members and all those who cycle (or could cycle) in Cambridge and the surrounding area. We’d like to extend a particular invitation to women, people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, parents, disabled people and people who live outside Cambridge city. We can be flexible and work with new trustees to ensure our meetings and processes are accessible.

Being a Camcycle trustee is rewarding and provides plenty of learning opportunities across a wide range of fields. There are some skills we would like to have more of on our board, including HR, finance/accounting, legal, communications, business development and fundraising; however, all backgrounds are welcome. The most important thing is that you are passionate about cycling and representing your community.

Save the date: Camcycle AGM 2022

The AGM is scheduled for Saturday 22 January (afternoon, time to be confirmed) and will be a virtual event. After careful deliberation, the trustees determined that the best course of action would be to continue with an online format for 2022 with the intention to move back to an in-person AGM in 2023. If possible, there will be an in-person social after the AGM.

Complete the Camcycle member survey to inform our work and guide future campaigns

It’s over two years since we carried out our last member survey: in that time membership numbers have grown from around 1,350 to over 1,600!
So, it’s time to invite you to tell us a bit about who you are, what you value about our work, how you’d like to get involved (if you want to and have time in this phase of your life) and what you’d like to see improved. This year we also have some additional questions about the Camcycle website, our strategy and campaigning priorities. As with all of the survey, these sections are entirely optional, but we’d love it if you could complete them to help direct our future work. For example, do we need to talk about reducing car journeys more as a way to improve cycling? Should we talk more about climate change or centre a campaign around health?

The staff and trustees are dedicated to keeping Camcycle an open and democratic organisation and we really value your views.

If you have any ideas or issues not covered in the membership survey, please get in touch or begin a new discussion with others on our member forum at camcycle.cyclescape.org.

Complete the survey

The 2021 member survey launches on Tuesday 5 October and will take around 10-15 minutes to complete. Some of the questions are the same as in our 2019 survey so we can monitor our progress since then. Please access the survey via the following link before Friday 5 November.

camcycle.org.uk/membersurvey2021

Thank you CDP for supporting cycling!

A group of CDP employees in cycle helmets on Parker's Piece in Cambridge
Finlay Knops-Mckim and other CDP employees at a cycle-to-work event.

Camcycle is grateful to technology and design consultancy CDP (Cambridge Design Partnership) for its generous donation of £5,000 to support our work for Spaces to Breathe and Zero Carbon Streets. Part of the grant will be used to employ a new infrastructure campaigner and community champion who will support Cambridgeshire communities to work for better cycling and walking across the region.

The UK branch of CDP is based just outside Cambridge and the grant was provided as part of the organisation’s 25th anniversary celebrations. The company was keen to mark this milestone by supporting the communities around its research and development centres, and is donating a total of £25,000 to five charities nominated by its employees.

CDP Partner Chris Houghton said: ‘Our 25th anniversary is a time to reflect on our purpose and culture. Part of that reflection is to acknowledge the way the pandemic has put pressure on the health and wellbeing of those around us and to work to make a positive impact in our local communities. We’ve chosen a range of charities working tirelessly to improve lives locally and we hope our support helps their vital work.’

CDP is a strong supporter of cycle commuting to the workplace and regularly hosts events to help its employees begin and continue to cycle, including cycle-to-work days with free breakfast and corporate participation in Love to Ride’s Cycle September challenge. Camcycle trustee Finlay Knops-Mckim is a CDP consultant electronics engineer and has been involved in organising these events. He nominated our charity for the £5,000 grant and said: ‘CDP and Camcycle were both founded in Cambridgeshire 25 years ago. Since then, they’ve worked to improve the world in their own ways – CDP by developing products and technologies to help improve lives, and Camcycle by campaigning for better infrastructure and healthier communities around Cambridge. Many of CDP’s employee owners use bikes to get around the city and commute, so Camcycle’s work to enable cycling also empowers us to reduce our carbon footprints and live healthier lives.’

Big impact from Camcycle resources

Cover of the Save your Cycles leaflet with the headline 'Love your bike? Lock it and log it'At time of writing, we have delivered over 20,000 Welcome to Cycling leaflets to new students across Cambridge and have finished distributing all 7,500 Save Our Cycles leaflets as well. Thanks to all the volunteers who helped with the delivery!

We can already see that Save Our Cycles is having a positive impact: over 1,000 people have watched our video to find out how to register their frame number and we are receiving many ‘recovery alerts’ from Bike Register, who keep us updated when a stolen cycle is returned to its owner in Cambridge.

In July, Cambridgeshire Police announced that during the pandemic they have arrested over 100 people in connection with cycle theft. We continue to work with the police, city council and other local stakeholders including Stolen Bikes in Cambridge to tackle this issue.

Visit camcycle.org.uk/welcometocycling to find our welcome leaflets and video.
Find out more about how to keep your cycle safe from theft at camcycle.org.uk/cycletheft