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Name: The Broken Spoke Co-operative
Established: June 2012, opening doors to the public the following December
Location: 42 Pembroke Street Oxford, OX1 1BP, near The Story Museum
What is it?
The Broken Spoke Bike Co-operative is an educational space where people can learn how to fix bikes. “Our overarching mission is to make cycling more than just a way to get from A to B; we want it to be a way of sustainable life,” explains co-founder and executive director Cassiope Sydoriak. “If you teach someone skills to fix a bike you are giving them the confidence to hopefully fix other appliances. It helps people to engage more in their town too, if you ride a bike you take in much more of your surroundings and it can make you feel more part of your community.”
The co-operative is open three days a week for members of the public, and does a great deal of work with women and transgender people, who are generally underrepresented in the world of cycling and mechanics. “We want people to feel free to come along regardless of their background or anything – everyone is welcome,” says Cassiope. The project has also been working with Crisis Skylight, which funds training sessions for homeless people three times a year, giving them the skills to become bike mechanics.
Why it started:
Through their involvement with the Oxford Cycle Workshop, Cassiope and fellow co-founder Ellie Smith started a twice-monthly women’s night to provide a safe place for women to explore mechanics and learn how fix their bikes. When OxCycle shut, the two wanted to keep the women’s night running so got a group of people together to help buy all of the tools from OxCycle. “The rule was that if we hadn’t done anything with the tools in three months (we kept them in a friend’s garage) then we would have to give all the money back to everyone who had pitched in to buy them – so we started Broken Spoke,” explains Cassiope.
“We wanted to be more of a social enterprise and cooperative rather than a charity as we didn’t ever want to become wholly reliant on funding. We would, however, like to have the financial luxury of knowing we can lock ourselves away for two weeks, do some business planning, checking our policies, and make sure we are moving everything along in a sustainable way.”
How many people are involved?
There are three full-time members of staff, four that are contracted staff for teaching the skills, and between 30 to 40 volunteers depending on the time of year.
Cassiope: “Through the week we probably get around 30 people in the open working classes and per month around 20 people coming to 20 sessions teaching people how to ride bikes and bike safety.”
Does the group get funding?
The main source of funding comes from the training sessions run by the cooperative. “We have a good partnership with Oxford Brookes University’s cycleBOOM research project which is studying cycling in the older generation. “They pay us the usual training fee so their participants can learn how to cycle; the oldest person we have taught how to ride a bike is 73 – it’s amazing to see that spark of freedom light up in their face when they get the hang of it,” says Cassiope. The cooperative are also partnered with Oxford University for teaching bike safety to professors and students, running six or seven different sessions a week. They are also supported by Community Action Groups Oxfordshire, who provide small grants and skills shares between the different community groups in the network.
What would they like to do next?
“We would really like to make projects with the charity Mind a regular thing,” says Cassiope. “It’s incredible how therapeutic focusing on just the mechanics of a bike can be for some people. We’d also like to make the work with Crisis Skylight and Asylum Welcome more regular. When asylum seekers get to Oxford they have so many things they need to sort out – a bike ends up low on their list of priorities. But giving them a bike and teaching them how to keep it working means they can get around, and it can also make them more employable.”
What can you do to help?
You can contact the Broken Spoke Bike Co-operative through their website and everyone is welcome to pop in on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays between 11am and 5pm. They are always open to more volunteers, too: “The more people there are about to help the more welcoming we are to the public. We don’t just look for bike experts either; we have people who work as bloggers, web experts, graphic designers – all sorts!”
You can also donate an old bike you have lying around. The co-operative takes many bike donations from students who leave Oxford at the end of the academic year. Decent bikes are fixed up and sold on at a reasonable price, and even the most rusted down cycle can be used for spare parts. If you have a bike to donate but are not based in Oxford, see this list from Re-cycle to find a bike drop-off location near you.
Can I set something like this up in my area?
“There are already things like this going on in many larger cities – a good example of another one is the Bristol Bike Project – so go and see how they do things and how they make it work for them,” says Cassiope. “My advice is don’t do it by yourself; find somebody who is as committed to the same ideas as you. It’s a community project for a reason so start by getting the community on side and go from there.”
The Co-operative Enterprise Hub can provide all sorts of free advice, training and consultancy on how to set up, run and grow a sustainable co-operative. A dedicated adviser will visit your project and put together a proposal for tailored advice and training, which cover anything from business planning and financial matters, to staffing, legal and governance issues.
Check out this incredibly comprehensive list to find an existing community bicycle organisation near you, and see their community wiki page for a list of resources for getting started. If you’re already part of a community bike co-operative or organisation, you can join their thinktank to seek advice, share wisdom, or make important announcements and you can also sign up for Bike!Bike!, an international annual conference organised by and for community bicycle projects, primarily in the United States.
This article is part of the Live Better Community Project month. In September, we are showcasing 17 community projects from around the UK. On Wednesday 24 September, we will ask you to vote for your favourite project. The project with the most votes will be awarded £1,000 of funding, and two runners-up will each receive funding of £500. One voter chosen at random will receive £150 worth of gift vouchers for Nigel’s Eco Store. Terms and conditions here.
With thanks to: 10:10; FOE; Project Dirt; Neighbourly; UK Community Foundations; Groundwork; Business in the Community; Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens; the Prince’s Trust; Garden Organic; the Royal Horticultural Society; the RSPB; Keep Wales Tidy; The Wildlife Trusts; and Mind.
Interested in finding out more about how you can live better? Take a look at this month’s Live Better challenge here.
The Live Better Challenge is funded by Unilever; its focus is sustainable living. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.
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