LCAG

Every year, LCAG hosts an “Open Evening” to which we invite a speaker and members of the public.  Speakers in the past have included John Grimshaw (then the Chief Executive of Sustrans), the cyclist and author Josie Dew.  Media presenter Jack Thurston was the main speaker in 2009.

In 2009, the Open Evening was held on 24 September.

In case you missed it, here is a report on what you missed.  LCAG hopes to see you at the Open Evening in 2010.  If you have any requests/suggestions for a speaker, please let us know.
Open Evening Report 2009
The Open Evening went very  smoothly in the end dispite some fairly “last minute” bits of organisation which were entirely my fault… As usual, Sue was superb with the organisation, being the first to arrive and probably the last to leave as well. Well done Sue!

For those of you who weren’t there, it was in the Friends Meeting House on Woodhouse Lane. It’s a nice, smart little venue and we filled all but two or three of the chairs and, cycle parking was aided by the cunning trick of using a ladder as a cycle rack. That was a brilliant idea which worked well  but, the bikes were still parked three deep, which meant that everyone had to leave in the correct order. So I suppose its testimony to how polite and civilised you all are that there wasn’t any fighting.

Tim Parry  and his assistant Laura Green (Assistant Transport Planner, Transport Policy, Leeds City Council) came along to represent the council and promote the Core Cycle Network. Both they and Sue Clark put on good displays on their respective tables and I’m quite disappointed I didn’t even get a chance to look at either because it all seemed to go so quickly. That maybe because at the last minute the lovely chap from The Friends let us use his kitchen for tea, coffee and biscuits. So a note for next year, lets make sure we have more tea, coffee and buscuits because we nearly didn’t get them this time. And bigger mugs please.

MC Andy Beck got things started by introducing Ellen Rowbottom from TINWOLF (Transition Inner North-West Of Leeds Forum!) who spoke for a few minutes about the Listen to Leeds day of action coming up. For more info on this visit http://transition- city-leeds. wikispaces. com/North+ West+Inner

The raffle was brilliant as usual with plenty of prizes to go round including:

Banana Protectors
Innertubes
Two Revolution ‘Tune-Up Kits’ donated by The Edinburgh Bycicle COOP (about £40 each)
Compact tool kit (seat tube fitting)
Set of Tyre levers
Sustrans Bike Computers (about 6)
Banana protectors
Home made Parkin
Home made Jam

There was more, but nobody can remember everything they saw on the table that night, there was just too much!

There was one extra special prize as well donated by the guest speaker. Read on to find out what that was…

The guest speaker this year was Jack Thurston. I know a lot of you were wondering who is Jack Thurston? Fortunately he took his time at the beginning to explain what he does. Primarily he’s known as the presenter of ‘The Bike Show’ on Resonance FM, which is a ‘community arts radio station’ in London. Since it was my idea to invite him I was really hoping like hell he’d do a good talk and he didn’t disappoint. His subject was billed as ‘The Aesthetics of Cycle Touring’ but as he explained, that became ‘The Aesthetics of Cycling’ something like, about 5 minutes before he started speaking!

Anyway, once he got going this turned out to be really a distillation of his thoughts on what cycling should be about. Put another way, he was musing on why we ride and what it is we enjoy about the activity.  Then he explored the effect of modern marketing methods and business models (i.e. the consumer society) on our ability to ride for leisure, pleasure and work without being influenced unduely by manufacturers and retailers, putting too many thoughts into our heads (which sprocket/handlebars/brake lever etc…). He also suggested that ordinary cycling is a type of artistic expression which attracts a certain type of person with a certain kind of  freedom of spirit… Is that you?

Jack covered a lot of ground, most of which I was familiar with from listening to podcasts of his shows, so it it didn’t on the whole surprise me to hear what he had to say. Then again, I didn’t entirely agree with everything he said either. If you were there you’ll remember that he suggested cycle campaign groups who demand better shower facilities from employers might be ‘barking up the wrong tree’ a bit, by implying that it’s a hard physical activity for strong fit superbeings (am I exagerating what he said, I don’t think so?). Myself and Richard P managed to get a few questions in at the end about that but he left us dangling a bit without fully answering. Would he make a good politician? Maybe, because before too many questions could be asked he had to dash off and catch a train, leaving myself at least wanting a bit more…

He left us with a tasty little present though; his contribution to the raffle was for the winning ticket holder to nominate someone to be interviewed on his radio programme. For those not familiar with The Bike Show, I urge you to IMMEDIATELY listen to some of his podcasts and find out what it sounds like when one cyclist is interviewed, whilst riding, by another cyclist holding the sound recording equipment and microphone. Get on the web and have a listen you won’t be disappointed!

www.resonancefm.com

www.thebikeshow.net

To subscribe to the Bike Show podcast, click here:

feeds.feedburner.com/bikeshow

In case you’re wondering, Maggie Burden won the ‘Jack Thurston’ prize and has decided to nominate our very own Chainletter editor Ron Dewhirst for the honour of being interviewed.

Overall I thought it was another brilliant LCAG evening but I’d like to make a couple of improvements for next year:

Hang around for a bit longer afterwards so I get a chance to speak to more of you. I’m as guilty as anyone here, after promising to nip over the road for a pint with the others the very important fact of a 5 o’clock start time at work came rampaging back to the front of my mind…
Bring more friends next year! I’ll get the invites out to more of you earlier, and we can use this excelllent showcase for LCAG to bring more people into our world…
AND even though it was great to see you all there, I’d like to get more people coming in who are maybe a bit less involved in the world of cycling than we are. Casual cyclists, families and younger people; you know what I mean!

I think we did alright on the night. Here’s an extract from an email correspondence which is typical of the feedback received:

“I would definitely want to come to any similar events being organised by LCAG in the future.”

Laura Green

Thanks Laura!

Thank you to everyone who came. The preparation for next year’s event starts today so send me any thoughts or suggestions you have whilst they’re still fresh in your mind.

Dave S.