Meet the Volunteer and Member Coordinator at The Bristol Bike project, Lucia Thompson.
I have to be honest, I’m not very good at settling down in a place, I’ve been here for five years. What I like most about Bristol is the variety of off-piste venues and events, and that I can cycle everywhere and there’s a river I can swim in.
I’m the Volunteer and Member Coordinator at The Bristol Bike Project: my day-to-day is a mixture of meetings with people inside and outside the organisation, strategic thinking and planning and day-to-day tasks. It’s always having fingers in many pies.
Bristol Bike Project was born in 2008 when two friends returned from their first cycling tour with a new-found love of bikes and a desire to help their community. James Lucas and Colin Fan had identified a need for affordable transport among asylum seekers in Bristol many of whom were struggling to get about the city to make important appointments and received very little support from the government. Having experienced for themselves the freedom a bicycle can bring, the solution became clear: help people get out on two wheels. They put up posters asking for unwanted bicycles, teamed up with Bristol Refugee Rights to spread the word among their members, and within days were spannering away and rehoming spruced up bicycles with delighted new owners.
We are a comprehensive community bike project, repairing and rehoming unwanted bicycles. We aim to help people from all walks of life get out on two wheels and we empower people within our community by providing access to affordable and sustainable transportation, encouraging an ethos of DIY and DIT (Do It Together!). We also try to strengthen our community by providing a vibrant and supportive workshop environment for people from all backgrounds to come and work alongside one another. The Bristol Bike Project promotes sustainability by saving bicycles and their working parts from landfill and always encourages reuse wherever possible, offering an alternative to buying new.
Seeing the new sign up on the front of our Stapleton Road shop entrance was a highlight for me because I know how many meetings, conversations, collaborations, time, love and commitment had gone into making it happen, all on a shoestring and it looks so great!
This year, we’re bringing young people back into the workshop for Friday’s After School Bikes drop in, restarting Social Cycle and putting on an Open Day (watch this space) to welcome the local community into the workshop. We’re also going to be creating a mural on the wall outside our workshop.
I think Baraka Café in Easton deserves a shoutout. It has been providing food for people every week throughout the pandemic, and is run by Esther and a great team. Also Rising Arts Agency is a community of young creatives, mobilising others for radical social, political and cultural change.
I’m currently reading To Paradise by Hanya Yangihara – I love her writing. I also just watched Can You Hear Me on Netflix and highly recommend it.
If I could have dinner with anyone from any era, I would have dinner with Audre Lorde, an iconic Black lesbian feminist scholar and poet. I would be shy to talk to her but would love to hear her read or in conversation – I am in awe of her work.
My philosophy in life is: try to approach everything with love and boundaries.
