cyclingcultures.org.uk

The website has been updated with lots of new content:
- Bike portraits
- Time-lapse sequence/film experiments
- Upcoming talks/conferences

I have also rejigged the navigation a little – so it should be easier to find existing content too. Happy to hear any comments/thoughts on the design and please let me know if you spot any weird/dead links etc.

I had just finished interviewing someone at Look Mum No Hands when I was approached by a photographer with a very impressive camera to have my portrait taken. Given I regularly ask others to pose for my series of Bike Portraits , I felt I could hardly so no. So, I’ll be in the back of the CTC mag at some point…..

You cannot help but be amazed and impressed by an interviewee who was hit by a car on the way to our meeting this afternoon. The impact knocked her onto a car whereby she hit her face on the bonnet and dinted the bodywork with her wheel, yet she jumped up, checked that her body and bike are ok, got the drivers number, continued on her way, made it to our allocated meeting spot at a cafe across the city and then talked for over an hour and a half with a tea-towel full of icecubes pressed to her cheekbone. Seriously! Amazing. Thankyou.

Thankyou Chris. And if you click on the pic, you can even spy Rachel in the corner.

I cycled to Hackney three times today from Central London, which is something I can say I definitely did not do with Hull. (One 2.5 day trip was enough, what with panniers filled with far too books and technnology). Equipped instead with a small backpack, this series of short trips meant I experienced three distinctly different times and types of entry and exit into the area. I had two scheduled interviews (one at 8am and one at 4pm) and during the middle of the day, I met with Rachel and Alix at Ridley Road Market. Although we already have a substantial response from Rachel’s participation at the Bikeweek Breakfast run by Hackney Cyclists, we wanted to further broaden our sample of cyclists by randomly approaching people in key cycling areas. So, today we spent time talking with cyclists as well as tagging parked bikes with our postcards along Kingsland Road. This has proved to be a successful approach in Hull so we are interested to see if it is going to work in Hackney. If you have had your bike tagged or you chatted to one of us today or you are simply interested in being part of the research please get in contact.

This is a mashup based on the Hackney bike shops map, combined with Index of Multiple Deprivation data (IMD, Crown Copyright 2007), and 2001 Census Output Area Boundary data (Crown Copyright 2003).

It’s a first attempt, so it’s just a flat jpeg and there is no legend – the darker green areas are the areas with higher levels of deprivation (according to the IMD). It shows a cluster of bike shops around the relatively better off Stoke Newington area to the Northwest of the borough. There’s also quite a line of bike shops along the South of the borough, which I guess may be to do with the workplaces in the Shoreditch area and the busy commuter route along the Hackney Road.

I ended up taking 25 Bike Portraits in Hull and I am gradually getting them up onto the Hull Fieldwork blog .

Many thanks to Briony for being the very first Hackney Bike Portrait.

As with Hull, I’ve created a little map with cycling resources in Hackney on it. These are just resources that can be geographically mapped within Hackney and that are generally publicly available. The OpenCycleMap background shows cycle routes and some bike parking available in the borough. The map will be updated as we discover more cycling resources.

Cycling around Hackney today I took a number of pictures. This one may not look like much, but it represents the rhythm of building and demolition. Just a year or two ago, instead of the crane there was the crumbling Lesney factory that once produced the iconic “Matchbox” toys. While the factory was open, the nearby Kingsmead Estate housed many factory workers. It closed in 1980 and the empty building remained until last year, when the demolition started. Soon there may be flats in place of the crane.

Of course, cycling along the Lea regularly I have been able to see the Olympic complex and its accompanying walls and fences rise up next to the towpath.
And speaking of the grand cycle of decay and regrowth, the water may also be where old bicycles go to die…