Our mission is to enable a million more people to cycle across the country. Your trust or foundation can change lives through cycling by supporting our evidence-led programmes and award-winning campaigns team.
The coronavirus crisis is having a devastating impact in every community across the country. Getting on a bike is becoming a key way people can stay active, support their mental health and travel safely to work. We can support thousands more people to get back on their bikes with support from trusts and foundations.
We directly help over 100,000 from some of the UK’s most disadvantaged backgrounds to get on a bike and stay on a bike through our innovative community-based programmes. We partner with local community organisations like mosques, family centres and mental health hospitals to ensure we help those who need us most. We rigorously monitor every programme to ensure it tangibly helps people improve their physical and mental health, switch their travel from cars to bikes, and create healthier, happier communities. You can find out more about our programmes here.
Our Cycle for Health programme is currently looking for new trusts and foundation funding. Developed in West Yorkshire it is now ready to be rolled out across the UK to support people suffering from isolation, anxiety and reduced activity levels as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The evidence-based cycling social prescription programme has reached over 1,000 people and last year’s results showed impressive improvements in people’s mental and physical health.
“My fitness has improved, my lung function is a lot better than it has been and now I actually want to go out and do other things, and keep cycling, keep active and really start living my life.” Andrea, Cycle for Health participant
Many of our programme participants join one of our community cycle clubs. We help volunteers to set up these inspirational local groups and then support with training and advice. From the Bike Hive in Manchester which supports refugees and asylum seekers to fix up their bikes and get cycling around the city, to Sara Park Community Club in Birmingham set up to support children at risk from exclusion, our clubs show how something as simple as a bike can change lives.
A million more people will only start cycling if they feel the roads are safe, that cars will watch out for them and there’s enough space for them to cycle. We create award-winning campaigns to mobilises cyclists across the country to persuade the government to invest billions more in cycling infrastructure, to open up more access in the countryside and change the Highway Code to make cycling safer. And our awareness-raising campaigns create innovative films and content to show people how they can help make the roads safer for cycling. You can find out more about our campaigns here.
We won the BikeBiz cycle advocacy award in 2019 for our two digital campaigns highlighting the danger of close passing cyclists and ‘car dooring’. Both featured 2D and virtual reality films which were viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social channels and are becoming a standard part of driving instruction courses.
We are always seeking trusts and foundations funding to expand existing campaigns so we can reach more people
We are actively seeking to grow our support from trusts and foundations over the coming months, especially as we know that cycling can help the country through the coronavirus crisis. We would love to hear from you if you think you might be able to support our amazing work, from community outreach to our amazing clubs and great campaigns.
We rely on voluntary funding for a huge proportion of our work and your contribution, whatever size, could make a huge difference to the lives of people across the UK.
For more information, please contact Felix Hilton at felix.hilton@cyclinguk.org
