Fresh look for freshers’ leaflets!

This article was published in 2017, in Newsletter 134.

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Right in time for the start of the academic year, our freshers’ leaflet refresh is complete and we are very excited about it! We’ve printed 10,000 leaflets and arranged distribution to educational institutions and colleges throughout Cambridge.

The first version of our ‘Welcome to Cycling’ leaflet was produced in 2015 (see Newsletter 122). It was very well received and we distributed more than 10,000 copies. During this time we had some great feedback on the leaflet including suggestions from college porters about the most important infor­mation to provide for students so we decided to produce a new, improved version.

In December 2016 (see Newsletter 129) we announced our participation in the Co-op Local Community Fund to raise funds for our Freshers’ project. We raised £6,513, significantly more than expected. This, combined with an earlier grant of £650 from the City Council Cycling Promotion Fund, provided a very healthy budget for our Freshers’ projects.

We have used part of this on professional design support for the new leaflet – compared to 2015 when the leaflet was produced on a shoestring and with my rather amateur desktop publishing skills. We decided to use local designer Alison Norden as we loved her fun, lively and inviting graphics and the potential for these graphics to be applied in future projects.

While the focus of this project is to provide a cycling resource to students in Cambridge, we have intentionally created a leaflet that will appeal to all people who cycle. If you would like to order leaflets for your college, school, community group or workplace please email contact@camcycle.org.uk. We also need volunteers who can help deliver leaflets.

What’s next?

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Social media is a key way to get our message across to students so the next phase is to use the leaflet graphics to create a short, animated video about safe and considerate cycling.

We will also be creating a webpage to support this work and creating topic specific posters and social media graphics to provide more detail for the specific issues presented in the leaflet.

We’ve had requests to increase the region covered by our ‘City Centre Cycling Map’ and we are currently inves­tigating the feasibility and scope for a project to do this.

We’re now waiting for the completion of the latest Co-op Local Community Fund which will contribute additional funds for our student promotion activi­ties (so far we have raised over £3,000!)

This will be used to purchase cycle bells and lights to include in our new Camcycle ‘Welcome to Cycling’ packs at various Freshers’ events.

The Co-op LCF has been an invaluable support for our work. We have applied to be part of it again next year which, if we are selected, will raise funds for a new and important project ‘Helping the community engage with the planning process’. We are very keen to produce and provide guidance and resources to empower individuals and groups to engage with the local planning system. We believe that this is key to getting better cycling and spaces that we can all enjoy. You can support our application for this project by expressing your support for Camcycle to your local Co-op store manager.

Roxanne De Beaux