A DIY festival
Last year the first ever Bristol Cycle Festival was founded with lots of money from the council. It was great, loads happened and it put the idea out there that we should be recognising and celebrating the unique cycling culture of our city.
This year has been different: we started out with very apart from a band of enthusiastic volunteers who wanted to make it happen again and no money. We constituted ourselves as a community group. We put on the legendary Vintage Velo which raised enough money to make the festival happen. Since then we’ve been talking to people about what they want to see in the festival and helping them to get events together.
How it works
Incredible, imaginative and hard working people have been working on putting their own events together – all for nothing but the love of the bike and making good things happen. If there is a small charge for an event it is to cover the cost of putting it on. The Bristol Cycle Festival, which runs over 9 days, is the banner under which all these events are being programmed and promoted.
We are supporting two key events which will bookend the festival: the Carnivelo (which has been supported by Bristol City Council and others) and the Bike Olympics (which will be an umbrella day for all things cycle and competitive).
This festival is a truly community run event, by the people for the people, and that’s how we like it.
Here’s a video about last year’s festival: 2010 Bristol Cycle Festival