Beauty and the Bike - Our Changing Face

Darlington Cycling Campaign organised a farewell party on Thursday for the many participants of the Beauty and the Bike project. It marked the end of one year of filming the remarkable story of these young women by Darlington Media Group, who hosted the event. Girls from cycling-friendly Bremen in Germany had just spent a week in Darlington exploring what it is like to cycle in a typical British town.


Editing now begins in earnest, whilst photographer Phil Dixon will be continuing to document the Darlington girls for a few more weeks. He and German portrait photographer Sabine Bungert are working towards a book about the project, which will also feature an essay by cycling activist and Cycling Campaign member Beatrix Wupperman.

The project began a year ago with just one regular cyclist amongst these teenagers. Now there are 13 bikes out on long-term loan, and a waiting list of 7 more. Plans are now afoot to formally constitute the scheme.

The film, which will be premiered in December, explores why so many British teenage girls give up cycling - and what needs to be done to reverse the trend. Perhaps these photographs are a clue. They are all regular cyclists, and most are now members of our Campaign.

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Beauty and the Bike film wins poster competition at national conference

On Saturday, myself and Richard represented the campaign at the CTC/Cyclenation/GMCC spring conference: "Cycling as a solution".

Between the morning's speakers (Koy Thomson of London Cycling Campaign, Roger Geffen of CTC) and discussions on Health (Joe Mellor, NHS), Wealth (Bruce Macdonald, SQW Consulting/Cycle England), Environment (Richard George, Campaign for Better Transport), Community (Juliet Jardine, CTC) and Style (Amy Fleuriot, Cyclodelic) and the afternoon's workshops, there was a poster competition.

We entered four posters for the campaign-supported Beauty and The Bike film and won first prize as the poster with the most votes from delegates!









Special praise should go to Darlington photographer Phil Dixon, who is doing the stills work for the project. His photographs, and those of German portrait photographer Sabine Bungert, will feature in a book and exhibition of the same name.

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Campaign Rapid Response for Bike Beauties

Nicole watching on as Andy and Marie crack on with the repair.

The Campaign was called out today on its first urgent repair job for the Beauty and the Bike project. The Cycling Campaign has been commissioned to provide a repair and maintenance service for the wonderful dutch bikes for the duration of the project. The bikes are being hired by the young women from Velodarlo, a self-managed bicycle sharing scheme that makes attractive dutch bikes available to the people of Darlington for a small charge.

Until now, we've been dealing with minor issues such as cabling, basket installs and re-tightening nuts and bolts after bike transit. But today Nicole called with a rear tyre puncture, after a thorn got into the inner tube. The Excelsior bike, like most in the Velodarlo fleet, has 28" wheels. A call to Halfords revealed that these are regarded as "rare these days" in this country. Funny how a town can be so behind the times that "modern" here is already becoming "out of date" elsewhere, but that's so-called entrepreneurial capitalism for you.

So a 27" inner it had to be. Step forward the heroes of the hour, Campaign members Andy and Marie. They were over to Nicole's house within the hour complete with tool kit, and had the tube replaced after another 30 minutes. After the job, they both said that the task with a dutch bike is totally different to the usual UK mountain bike, with chain guards and hub gears to grapple with. And with the size and type of spares also differing, the chances are that one of the local bike shops would have had problems. But they reckon that with a few more tube changes, the Campaign should have the collective knowledge to manage future issues without a problem.

Nicole is now back on two wheels again, and will be seen on the roads of the town tomorrow morning on her way to her Maths GCSE.

Good Luck Nicole!

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Velodarlo: Dutch bike loan in Darlington

A FASHION show on bikes will launch a cycle sharing scheme tomorrow.

Velodarlo will make stylish Dutch city bikes available for use by Darlington residents for a small weekly charge as part of Darlington Media Group's Beauty and the Bike project.

The project involves a film crew and photographer following a group of young women as they cycle around Darlington, showing that cycling can by stylish and has raised grants needed to fund Velodarlo.

To launch the bike hire scheme, members of the Beauty and the Bike project will be on their bikes modeling clothes from the Leggs, in Skinnergate, in the town centre at noon tomorrow.

If you are interested in joining Velodarlo call Darlington Media Workshop on 01325-488139 or e-mail velodarlo@mediaworkshop.org.uk.

- The Northern Echo: Beauties show model behaviour on bikes

The event will be held in Pease Place (below the statue) at 12noon.

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