Welcome to the 2018 Cambridge Festival of Cycling!

This article was published in 2018, in Newsletter 139.

Camcycle is thrilled to announce the 2018 Cambridge Festival of Cycling, which will run throughout the month of September, with events taking place every week across the city.

www.cambridgefestivalofcycling.org
Photo: Brian Harris, Unsplash
Image as described adjacent

We have exciting speakers lined up including Alec Seaman from World Bicycle Relief and Kat Jungnickel, author of ‘Bikes and Bloomers’. This festival will be a celebration of the extensive and inclusive world of cycling, reaching out to new people across the local community and getting people talking about Camcycle.

And that’s not all – we also have the launch of a new flagship event: the Cargo Carnival! This will be a fantastic display of cargo bikes and will showcase the ways cycling can be used to carry a wide range of people and products in everyday life. The Cargo Carnival will also give Camcycle the chance to present its newly branded stall bike to the streets of Cambridge.

The intention is that this festival will grow and become an annual event, much like our flagship Reach Ride

This festival is open to everyone and will be a chance for Camcycle to interact with new people and expand our membership and volunteer support base, resulting in an even greater influence in the local community.

One of the major events of this festival will be the tailored family cycling event. This will include a panel of experts who can answer questions and give advice to families who are cycling, showing them different ways to transport children and featuring insight from British Cycling coaches. As well as this, there will be a showing of the celebrated Why we Cycle film, and organised social rides to encourage more people to cycle.

We will also be organising a cycle to work mini-conference to share expertise with local employers and engage with commuters who need a bit of encouragement to switch to cycling and improve their working day.

For the month of September, we have partnered with the Cambridge Independent who will be reporting on our festival events and raising awareness of Camcycle.

The intention is that the festival will grow and become an annual event, much like our flagship Reach Ride, raising awareness and connecting with more people who can help support our campaign. The festival also creates opportunities to work more closely with other local groups and help increase our influence in local decision-making.

An event of this size has been a goal of the Campaign for some time and was made a strategic objective in the three-year plan of 2015-2017, so we are excited finally to be able to bring it to fruition.

Although some details are unconfirmed as we go to press, we will regularly be updating the website at www.cambridgefestivalofcycling.org. This event promises to be Cambridge’s biggest celebration of cycling yet!

Emma Pritchard