Pedallers' Arms Opens

After a long six months absence the Pedallers' Arms re-opened its doors on Monday.  The aim of the project is to empower people to repair their own bicycles and, towards this goal, in the new space there are 5 workstations each with a set of tools.  There will be sessions every week on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 4-8pm, each session will have a minimum of two mechanics to offer help if needed and assist the members find the right tool for the job. The project is vounteer run and funded by donations.

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The Pedallers' Arms hopes that letting people get mucky with their own bikes will give them confidence that they can fix things so mechanics try to use a "hands-off" approach where the control is firmly in the bike owner's hands. 

The bike world can sometimes seem to be dominated by rich boys playing with expensive bikes.  To address the cost issue, Pedallers Arms is promoting cycling as a cheap form of transport and people are not looked down upon for having a cheap bike or not knowing how to use a spanner. 

There are also low-price second-hand parts available to make repairs more affordable.  To address the gender imbalance on the third Sunday of the month there are women and trans only sessions. 

The Pedallers' Arms moved into the space two weeks ago and since then there has been lots of activity building a workbench, wheel store, counter and a beautiful sign.  On opening night, despite the drizzling weather the 60m2 of warehouse on Mabgate Green was full; soon after opening all the stands were filled with wet cyclists repairing bikes and then, after the bike repairing was over (and for the opening night only), there was some cake and ale to be had.

Other Northern Bike projects include Recyke-Y-Bike (Newcastle), Pedal MCR (Manchester), Bike Rescue (York) and I Bike Sheffield.

The Pedallers' Arms workshop shares a building with The Space Project [1], a radical education space presented by The Really Open University[2]. (It's the unassuming red door that hasn't got a sign on at the time of writing[3]).

 [1] http://wearethespaceproject.wordpress.com/

[2] http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/

[3] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=53.800695&mlon=-1.532842&zoom=18&layers=M