Community is at the heart of all we do at Support Staffordshire. We strive to create links between key individuals and groups within areas across the county to support them in working collaboratively to ensure their own communities can thrive.
A fantastic example of this is the Chain Reaction Project based in the Staffordshire Moorlands, which launched in April. The project is a fantastic example of how so many members of the community can work together to improve health, wellbeing and sustainability in their local area, which will hopefully have a lasting impact on future generations.
What is the Chain Reaction Project?
Chain reaction is a new initiative focused on breathing new life into refurbished bikes, supporting with minor repairs and bike servicing, encouraging more people to get active through cycling and talking about cycling in the Staffordshire Moorlands. The idea being that different sections of the local area can support each other by using their resources and skills to aid people recycle old cycles and give them to people in need to encourage them to get more active and meet people with shared interests who can explore the local area with them. Not only is it a great way to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals but it is also a great way to promote more sustainable and green way of life throughout the Moorlands; helping preserve and maintain the picturesque, natural environment that encompasses the area.
The aims of the project are to:
- Find new homes for bikes that have been taken to the Recycling Centres.
- Help people to learn how to do repairs and look after their bikes.
- Encourage more residents to get on bikes and find amazing places to ride.
- Start lots of conversations about cycling in the local area.
As you can see to achieve these aims it is vital that a vast range of people within the community work together to achieve these aims and make the project a success.
How did the project come about?
One of our key values at Support Staffordshire is to be community driven. We believe that people create their own futures together. We champion mutual understanding, collective learning & local decision making. Therefore, we ensure we make efforts to speak to people to see what they feel would benefit their local areas and try and make links with them and organisations to see how we can do this.
OUTSIDE Arts, which is part of Support Staffordshire, became involved after speaking to various people in the Moorlands.
Sarah Bird, Creative Director of OUTSIDE, said “OUTSIDE’s involvement came about because when listening to residents and partner organisations, we heard that young people were keen to have bikes, that adults were in need of ways to get around with limited bus services (some of the job club in Biddulph already use bikes to get to the club) that families wanted fun activities to take part in together as a family and that there had been a previous bike scheme at Biddulph Youth & Community Zone where the police helped young people learn about bike security and maintenance.” She also added that “At the same time we became aware of Staffordshire County Council’s ambition to recycle bikes left at waste disposal sites, of Moorlands Climate Action and Social Connective’s willingness to help fix the bikes and Nigel yates the mayor of Biddulph’s Cycling challenge.”
This turns out to be where another member of the Support Staffordshire Team came in. Deborah Boden, our Community Development Officer for North Staffs, met Gemma Wall, Staffordshire County Council’s Waste Minimisation Project Officer at the Staffordshire Moorlands VCSE Locality Forum in December. Deborah has been working on the ‘Move More Staffordshire Moorlands’ project and cycling was something on her radar to promote through this. Discussions followed over the large amounts of good quality bikes which the local recycling centre receives and led to Deborah making further links with Moorlands Climate Action and their Repair Café, to see if there was a way to make use of the bikes and get people cycling in Cheadle.
The joint connections made through both OUTSIDE and Deborah then came together to create a Steering Group which included themselves and representatives from: Staffordshire County Council, Staffordshire Police, Social Connective, Biddulph Town Council, Moorlands Climate Action and The Biddulph Youth & Community Zone, and the Chain Reaction Project was born.
What is happening and when?
The project is planned to run over the next twelve months through several events. officially launched in April. OUTSIDE ran workshops with children from Knypersley and Kingsfield First Schools to create some amazing nature inspired bike floats along with wonderful flags and hats with the help of artists Rost Productions and Janine Walker.
These were then used to wave off the Mayor of Biddulph as he headed off on his charity bike ride to London, which officially launched the project on 9th April.
There was then a fantastic exhibition to promote the event held on 12th April at Biddulph Library. All members of the steering group worked together to organise the event, which comprised of many components of the project and united so many groups and individuals within the community. There was a bike sale, organised by Waste Savvy Staffordshire, where all the bikes from the recycling centre went to new homes; all proceeds going to the local foodbank. The Moorlands Repair café sent a team of volunteer fixers to help people repair their bikes and learn how to do this independently which is something they hope to expand into young people in schools. Staffordshire Police were also present to give people tips about bike security and mark bikes. Finally, there was a fantastic performance from Bicycle Ballet who wowed with their ‘Strictly Cycling’ routine. The whole town was full of a buzz for cycling and supporting the project. See the video below which highlights the success of the day.
Deborah has also been working on developing the programme in Cheadle. Although still in its infancy, Deborah has already linked with Moorlands Climate Action and their Repair Café and made plans to facilitate some pop-up repair cafes, where in which the bikes from the recycling centre, which are suitable for repair and reuse, will be fixed and distributed back into the local community. So far, four of these have been proposed. and plan to include different local organisations to be the beneficiaries of the repaired bikes. The idea fits well with Moorlands Climate Action’s target areas of recycling and repurposing items and with its active travel aims. Getting people on bikes, getting bikes to people who may not be able to afford a bike or access bike riding, and alleviate bikes from landfill, is a huge win for all involved with this project.
Deborah has also made links with the Youth worker in Cheadle, who is very keen to be involved with this project and has said she can host one of the pop-ups and get some of the local young people involved in the repairs and help distribute the bikes to the participants. There is discussion around other off shoots to this initial project and involving the young people in continuing to develop cycling in Cheadle, with a focus on safer cycling and identifying possible cycle routes.
What happens next for the project?
After discussion with people and organisations in the community, other groups identified as being keen to be involved as the project develops. These are:
- Local schools, particularly if they offer bike ability courses to their pupils and want to encourage cycling to school.
- The Job Club – job seekers could be incentivised to obtain a bike through the scheme to get them to work or volunteering opportunities.
- The Women’s Refuge is also a target audience for participation in the scheme. As part of the wider Chain Rection project Outside Arts will be facilitating some Women on Bikes activities in Cheadle to help overcome barriers to cycling faced by residents there.
A further suggestion is that a Moorlands Cycling Forum could be developed around the Chain Reaction project and Moorlands Climate Action have enquired to whether Move More may be able to support with facilitating this. Deborah has planned to have more discussions about how this can be facilitated and how this can be used to keep the engagement in the project high as it progresses.
It is clear though that the project has already got lots of support and enthusiasm from many stakeholders within the Moorlands and its individual communities. It will be exciting to see how it develops and the success it will have for all involved. However, it is already clear that this project perfectly exemplifies Support Staffordshire’s beliefs about the importance of community driven initiatives. We have already seen how so many sections of the community have contributed to get the project established and worked together to ensure that all people within the area can benefit from it. The fact that it encourages young people to have a vested interest in cycling and bike maintenance as well as giving older people and people who have been able to have access to bicycles a chance to take up cycling, shows just how far reaching it could be. We can’t wait to see the positive impacts it will have on the physical and emotional wellbeing of the individuals who take part. Not only that, it has the potential to have a lasting impact on the future generations of the Moorlands. By reducing waste, promoting recycling and encouraging people to cycle over other modes of transport, it encourages the development of climate awareness which could be vital in protecting the environment in the years to come. Showing how just by doing one thing to help a project you can start a ‘Chain Reaction’ which can make a massive difference to the lives of others now and in the future. What an exciting and important thing to be a part of!
