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April 2026

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Teaching mechanics to kids (elementary school)
by martin_labrosse.gabriel＠courrier.uqam.ca 18 May '26

18 May '26

Hello think thank community! There is a very motivated mom from a parents' committee in a nearby elementary school that has reached out to our CBS to participate to a program they are conceptualizing and have received fund for (3K$). They wanna make a small bike workshop for kids' bikes. The first objective is to inspire confidence and autonomy through manual skills/labor in bike mecanic and maintenance. I wanna know what kind of things you are teaching to kids. We're talking elementary age (here in Québec it's 6-12 years old). Of course parents in the committee will be present throughout. For the cursus, I am thinking about the cleaning and maintenance of the transmission, the tube repair and maybe the installation of a few parts, which more be a way to make a better understanding of the bike in genereal. I am thinking there should be an initial crash course with the parents in our workshop, then we could go to their school with our mobile workshop. Let me know what you guys think! Cheers BTW pardon my english!

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Fwd: FW: lecture Weds. 29 April, Batterbury/bike workshops
by angel york 01 May '26

01 May '26

============ Forwarded message ============ From: Simon Batterbury <00009091183a7a38-dmarc-request(a)JISCMAIL.AC.UK> To: <CYCLING-AND-SOCIETY(a)JISCMAIL.AC.UK> Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:56:20 -0400 Subject: FW: lecture Weds. 29 April, Batterbury/bike workshops ============ Forwarded message ============ Lecture “Prefiguring Consumption Reduction: Recirculating Resources, Knowledge, and Skills in Community Bike Workshops”, by Simon Batterbury, University of Melbourne, Australia. https://liu.se/en/event/planning-in-transition-lecture-with-simon-batterbury Zoom link is on there. 10am CET. 29 April. [9am UK] As Patrick Rérat et al. argue (Le tournant vélo, 2026), "a cycling city is first and foremost a question of will." I explore some willful, unconventional organizations that perform practical tasks – assistance to keep thousands of bikes maintained and, on the road, largely in Western cities – and I show how they also contribute to countering consumerism and unsustainable transportation. Community bike workshops or ‘bike kitchens', have practical intent but also 'prefigure' more sustainable mobilities and contribute to degrowth. They offer a convivial environment for maintaining/restoring/salvaging bicycles, sharing tools and knowledge (also doing art projects, arranging classes and rides, directly assisting the marginalised, and many other activities). Workshops put into practice many of the principles set out by Ivan Illich and theorists of solidarity networks. They give participants (some with no mechanical knowledge) repair skills, and participation in convivial and diverse social networks in a 'sharing' commons. 'Practice' generates values. Community bike workshops are part of undervalued, 'shadow networks', generally marginalised by the local state and by mainstream infrastructure-heavy transport planning. They can be fragile since they need affordable premises, tools and volunteers. Interviews and participant-observation done with my friends & colleagues in around 60 workshops over 20 years in 8 countries have revealed some workshops are better at securing sustained human interest and investments of money, time and energy than others. Federating workshops has led to more visibility, as with l'Heureux Cyclage in France, but is still rare. Workshops, and cognate organisations like Tool Libraries and repair cafes are important because they willfully and enthusiastically intervene in specific circuits of material items and knowledge largely outside the state or corporations, and they also socialise reuse/repair, active travel, and urban 'bikespaces'. They need our support. About the lecturer Simon Batterbury is Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Melbourne, and currently a research visitor at TEMA T. He has worked on […….] (Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky, 2024). He currently supports students through the Melbourne Climate Futures PhD Academy and has been editor of the Diamond OA Journal of Political Ecology for 23 years, also challenging commercial academic publishers. He has worked at WeCycle, a bike kitchen restoring bikes free of charge for refugees and people in need in Melbourne, since 2019. The lecture is organised by the international lecture series Planning in Transition at Technology and Social Change, Linköping University [Peter Cox also did one in 2024 ! https://liu.se/en/organisation/liu/tema/temat/international-lecture-series-… ] Prof. Simon Batterbury April-May 2026 | https://liu.se/en/organisation/liu/tema/temat/research-fellows-at-technolog… , Tema T - Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Sweden School of Geography, Earth and Atmos Sciences & https://www.unimelb.edu.au/climate/collaboration/mcf-academy in Melbourne Connect. | 2.36, 221 Bouverie St, University of Melbourne | 3010 VIC | Australia | simonpjb @unimelb.edu.au +61 383449319 http://www.simonbatterbury.net/ | Journal of Political Ecology https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/ Kowasch M, Batterbury SPJ (eds.) 2024. Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49140-5 Socially just publishing outlets https://simonbatterbury.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/list-of-decent-open-access… To unsubscribe from the CYCLING-AND-SOCIETY list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CYCLING-AND-SOCIETY&A…

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