David Williams
For this article, I had a chat with Mat, the current project leader at the Hastings Bike Project (HBP). We talk about the origins, past, present and future plans of the project, as well as the challenges and joys of cycling, mastering the mechanics and running a community bike workshop.
A Little Goes a Long Way
I remember my first ‘proper’ bike trip – that is, one which lasted longer than a day – camping and all, with some pals around Brittany. Back then I knew very little of bike maintenance, save being able to just about fix a flat tire – which arguably, is the bare minimum a bike owner should be able to do. It was a great trip – our blissful ignorance of how our machines actually worked wasn’t a hindrance at all – that is until something went slightly awry in the form of a snapped gear cable. I won’t go into the details of the workings of bicycle gear controls (although, once you’ve been shown a few times it’s pretty straightforward – come on down to HBP for that!), but it meant that my pal had to ride in his hardest gear for some fifty odd miles until we came upon a town with a) a bike shop, and, crucially b) one that was open. Once said shop was found – our needs communicated with much gesturing and broken French – the necessary repairs were made and my friend was once again able to cycle up hills with relative ease. Cost-wise, it probably set us back around twenty Euros in parts and labor – but knowing what I do now, I would’ve been able to fix it myself for the cost of the cable – about four euros.
These aren’t huge sums of money, and certainly, the cost of bike maintenance pales in comparison to the cost of maintaining a c*r. But if, like we were, you’re working a minimum wage job or receiving benefits, combined with the fact that you may well rely on your bike for getting back and forth to work, the costs can still add up – and with the average price of a high-street bike service starting at around forty quid, a modicum of bike maintenance knowledge can save you a fair chunk of cash down the line. If you go one step further with a bit of preventative maintenance, you can keep your trusty steed running smoothly (and safely) for years to come and for very little money. Who knows, you might even start to enjoy it.
I was lucky enough to have access to a bike workshop where I lived in a housing co-operative in South East London, with some very generous and knowledgeable folks who were happy to share their skills with me. Not needing to work so much (yes, we should all live in housing co-ops and free ourselves from the tyranny of unscrupulous landlords, but that’s another article), I also had the luxury of a bit more free time back then which I could spend, among other things, tinkering with bikes.
While not at the level of a professional bike mechanic by any means, I did get to spend time with a lot of different bikes, and eventually I was able to pay forward some of the skills that had been passed to me to other folks in the co-op. As such, when I moved to St Leonard’s last year, I was instinctively drawn to something that looked like familiar territory – I’d also spent some time volunteering with a bike charity in London – so when I saw the words ‘Bike’, ‘Project’ and ‘Hastings’, I had to go down and check out was happening in this funny little den of bicycle iniquity on the seafront.
All Bikes Are Weapons
Reads the title of the Heathcote Williams poem, lovingly hand-painted and proudly displayed on the wall of the HBP. It serves as a reminder to both patrons and volunteers alike of the values that underpin what goes on at HBP – resisting the individualist trappings of late-stage capitalism one pedal stroke at a time.
‘Few are unhappy on bikes…’, writes Williams, and through a mixture of bicycle advocacy, skill-sharing, and local events, HBP, like similar projects up and down the country (search up “community bike projects uk” and you’ll see what I mean) seeks to empower local people with basic bike maintenance skills, keep people riding, save bikes from landfill and get people on bikes who might not otherwise be able to afford one.
“What is now called the Hastings Bike Project”, Mat informs me, “…was called the Bike Lab, and before that, Labyrinth…” which, Mat goes on, had a much more general focus as a creative space:
“The Labyrinth…had maybe a bit more of a push on the art side of things because they did things like paint recycling – people brought down old paint and there we had lots of artists down there…you know the walls still bear the work of lots of Hastings artists and graffiti artists that are still working in the area…it was always like that – just a group of people who got together being like, oh there’s a space going, we have this idea, something like this doesn’t exist currently, let’s get something going.”
The space then developed, as Mat emphasises, more or less organically. Growing in line with the interests and skills of those involved, gradually developing a constitution of sorts with bicycles becoming the dominant focus. From this melting pot of creatives, tinkerers, and community-minded bicycle enthusiasts, HBP was born – or perhaps more aptly – emerged.
While Mat joined the project a little later, his involvement echoed these organismic sentiments and the reciprocal relationship therein:
“I came in around three years after it started – entered it as a punter wanting to get my bike fixed and I met a bunch of people down there fixing bikes who were happy to share their knowledge and the tools which is the whole premise of the place.
“We share tools and knowledge and help each other to keep rolling…the values that were there from the very inception and up to now still hold true – a commitment to creativity and community and sharing through bikes”.
This was back in 2016, and though many of the founders have moved on or left the area, “one’s farming apples, one’s building bikes..”, Mat has kept the project together – or as he slightly more pragmatically puts it, he was “the last one standing”.
That’s not to say it is a one-person show, of course. HBP relies on committed volunteers to keep things ticking along – individuals with a bit of experience fixing up bikes (or who are willing to learn), who’ll show up more or less consistently – or who, like Mat, stick around long enough to become part of the core organising group, keen to take on extra responsibilities and push things forward.
A Force Multiplier
Mat recalls how supportive he found the community when he first arrived at HBP and its special flavor of pedagogy, something which resonated strongly with my first contact with crafty, bikey folk:
“I was definitely influenced by all the people that were there before. They were all vehemently grassroots, and we’re not talking about people with a didactic or dogmatic attitude, and it’s not like they were spouting Kropotkin every two seconds, you know. We were just, self-organised and they were trying to share the knowledge. They were very generous…they would take time to explain things to you and if you had the enthusiasm they would meet you with it. You know like, the ten rules of art school, rule number four or whatever it is – as a student get the best out of your teachers, so a teacher can get the best out of you, and that’s what it was always like.”
It’s not hard to draw parallels here between the multiplying action of the pedal-stroke – the variable ratios of bicycle gears, and the practice of ‘each one teach one’ (or two, three…), which was and continues to be one of the core principles at HBP, aided by an infectious enthusiasm for all things two-wheeled and a recognition of the simple, utilitarian nature of the humble bicycle: “…they all rode bikes…had to fix their bikes, some of them had been involved in bike projects previously. You can talk about the reasons why certain activities attract a certain mindset, you know – I think bikes are inherently…how to put it? Like they’re a leveler, they’re a socialist machine, there’s a point in bicycle design…a bike is a force multiplier for the people, you know, I don’t need to have a car, but I can get places – you become more mobile, you can get further and go further, faster, for relatively little…there’s an egalitarianism to it”.
Of course, the bike industry, like many others, has fallen victim to things like planned obsolescence masquerading as technological progress. Such advancements may have their place in elite racing (looking at you, carbon-fibre frames and electronic gears), but are really just expensive gimmicks for your average bike user.
Note the semantics here – this same industry would have us all become ‘cyclists’, lifestyle consumers who buy into the latest hype and trends. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, and all very well if you’ve got the wallet for it. Often though, this idea that you need a whole bunch of specialised gear only serves to put people off who might be new to cycling. To me, that’s another key feature of HBP and other projects like it, working against the tides of the ‘industry’ and championing the bicycle as a simple, healthy, and affordable form of transport for the people.
If you know what you’re looking for, you can still get inexpensive, well-made functional parts that will last and do the job. Heck, there are bike frames and components from the 1950s that are still going strong. You can pop down to HBP and pick up a highly capable and practical second-hand bike for a very reasonable price. Or you can get one from a high-street supermarket for two hundred quid that will break within a month.
Either way, bike projects like HBP are invaluable repositories of knowledge and advice; community hubs for experienced and would-be bike users/cyclists/want-to-get-to-the-shops-a-bit-faster-ers alike, capable of meeting the needs of people at either end of the economic spectrum:
“ that’s one of the things that lots of people have said they loved about the space is that you know, we try and involve anyone to come in…if you ride a bike and you want some advice, or you want to keep riding a bike, but it might be a bit broken, then we can try and help you – we will try and put some tools in your hand because that’s really where we want it to be, we want people to be more self-sufficient…if you can gain a modicum of confidence about how it works and your ability to be able to diagnose and deal with it, that’s really what we want…”
Mat and I are very much in agreement here – there’s a magic that comes from sharing practical skills, a confidence that can be gained from learning how to handle basic tools and fix your own stuff – if I can fix this thing, maybe I can learn how to fix other things?
Maybe, instead of chucking away that broken or damaged thing I can fix it or repurpose it…and so the seed is sown. It might land on barren ground and go no further, but it may take root, and maybe go some ways to disrupt the all too prevalent cycle of mindless, passive consumerism:
“We do things a little bit differently – it’s not like cycling is itself subversive, which I think it can be, but I think the thing about a bike project or a community bike workshop, in general, is they challenge that notion of exchange… in a community where you want to interact with your fellow human…to go back to the ideals of it you’re upsetting that kind of capitalist instinct people get programmed into – if you can’t afford it then we can still help you”.
Keyworkers and Bike Bombs
I’m keen to hear from Mat what some of his highlights and wins have been over his eight-year tenure with HBP:
“The bottle alley bike bomb – we ran that three times….a head-to-head race down bottle alley – we did it in heats…I think the maximum number we had was 150 people, hacking it down sort of a third of the length of the bottle alley. By the third iteration, people had clearly been training for it – really went for it. We had everything from ice cream trikes to kids’ bikes…that was always good, really good fun.”
This was pre-pandemic times though, and as Mat informs me – changes to the town since then, “ I’m really trying to avoid the G word…”, such as a preponderance of coffee shops and the like popping up along bottle-alley – have made it more challenging to run such events. As Mat is keen to clarify though, inclusivity and adaptability are very much in the spirit of HBP, and getting local business (as well as the local council) on side is essential – so reviving the bottle-alley bike-bomb in the dusky after-hours could still be on the cards.
Speaking of pandemic times, HBP certainly wasn’t sitting on its laurels. While not being able to open to the public, with a growing stack of bike donations, and a team of keen volunteers meant that HBP was in a unique position to help key workers in the local area:
“We built, the volunteers built, 80 bikes out of the pile to give to key workers who now couldn’t get buses, or were worried about getting public transport. Nurses, people working in Tesco and the like….yeah that was a nice highlight”.
HBP also served as a testbed for a local bike delivery company during this time:
“Previous lynchpin and project lead Tim Godwin seized the clear roads and economic turmoil as a drop in capitalisms guard, a moment for change at least where bikes were concerned. In true HBP spirit, he taught himself to make cargo bikes. We launched Hastings Cargo Company – long before gig economy blokes on bikes with oversized backpacks carting poison food were everywhere – connecting local businesses to their clients with home-built cargo bikes. The company soon got overtaken by the venture capitalist-funded hordes and has now ceased operations, but it gave Tim plenty of experience making his cargo bikes – https://arielbikes.com/”
It’s the people though, as has been stressed throughout, that make any of this possible:
“Being at the point we are now, where, you know, we’ve gone through completely natural processes – people moving on, moving away. But we’re still running the space, 11 years on, with the same constitutional goals and ethos, with a strong team of really knowledgeable, gifted, and interesting people bringing their skills to it. And we’re still here, and we’re sustaining ourselves.”
Moving Forward
The key highlights, of course, circling back to where we started, that are the lifeblood of HBP, reviving bikes and developing skills:
“…seeing idle bikes, that have lost their exchange value finding their innate use value again. Especially kids’ bikes. Kids’ bikes always go. And seeing people’s confidence grow as they learn skills and help others – it’s about those small wins every session.”
But while donations from the public sessions might just about keep things ticking along, projects like HBP can’t survive, let alone grow, on voluntary efforts and contributions alone. Though convenient, the current location of HBP – essentially a sea-level basement on the seafront – presents constant upkeep challenges and, as Mat points out, “…ultimately, that building is doomed, right? Like, at some point, it’ll be underwater.”
So while the waves might not swallow up HBP for a little while yet, a new venue will certainly be something on the not-too-distant horizon. Although the local council has generally been supportive of HBP, there are broader infrastructural challenges:
“How do you shake people out of sedentary life when the town planning has gone to shit? They had 400K during the pandemic to make bike easements and they didn’t use it – we literally gave it back. And so you’re definitely up against it already with the fact that people don’t feel safe on the roads.”
Given all this, fundraising will need to be a strong focus for HBP soon, and Mat isn’t afraid to think big:
“…you know, if we had ten bike mechanics trained up, we could run a full-service place, everyone doing four hours a day….or we could train up ten school leavers who need qualifications, who need something to do, and there are lots of people out there who need some shit to do…lots of people out there who are not academic learners, who are not going to learn any of the new service industries that are constantly making people redundant. Is there a way that model could be rolled out? Yeah – it’s got a name, It’s called planned economy.”
In the shorter term though, If HBP can secure a big enough chunk of funding then the plan would be to get someone working part-time – taking care of the day-to-day admin and freeing up some headspace from Mat and other volunteers to focus on the public open days and training. There’s also talk of switching up the organisational structure – a co-operatively owned bike workshop anyone?
HBP are always keen to hear from folks who want to get involved, especially those from less-represented backgrounds. Whether you’re a dab hand at fixing up bikes, a wizz with funding applications or you just want to get your hands dirty and learn some new skills – then HBP wants to hear from you. Swing by on a Saturday morning, or get in touch at volunteer@hastingsbikeproject.org.