CycloGeographic, Caerphilly, Wales
Last Sunday 5th September, Paul Hurley, Arabella Butler and I set off to Caerphilly, to set up our participatory cycling arts event for SusTrans’ MicroFest event. Posing as our alter-egos, The Explorer (Paul), The Ringmaster (Me) and Lady Bee (Arabella), we invited the public to explore their surroundings in new, creative ways, either on foot or by bike.
Part treasure hunt, part discovery game, Cyclo-Geographic was commissioned by SusTrans as a cycle-based arts event for adventurers of all ages. With a selection of things to do, make or find, adventurers will set off from the Castle to explore, on foot or by bicycle, the National Cycle Network in and around Caerphilly.
We invited Explorers to spin the ‘Bike Wheel of Fortune’ to decide on their tasks, based on different skills/areas, a la Trivial Pursuit: Nature, Creativity, History etc. They were then given ‘luggage tags’ with ‘Invitations’ for games and exercises to do.
Our amazing artist friend, H Ren, painted a gorgeous map of the site and the National Cycle Network area, so when people returned from their explorations, they were asked to ‘map’ where they had done them. Thus, an alternative map was created which represented people’s creative experiences of the area:
H Ren's beautiful alternative map of Caerphilly, with people's experiences pinned to it. This is now with Caerphilly library.
In our bright red tent, we had prepared various bike-based artefacts from surplus bike parts from the Bristol Bike Project. Here’s the Cyclo Geo sign, made entirely of bike parts! I was quite proud of it…
CycloGeo bike part sign
Paul and I are keen cyclists – and I’m passionate about how important it is for more people to get cycling – so it was a great pleasure to do an interactive event which was so cycle-centric. This is something we could very easily adapt to other localities and events, so if you want to talk about us doing it at an event then please get in touch.
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