The Bicycle Academy is a new enterprise providing people with the skills and facilities to design and make their own bikes. Frame building will be taught by the legendary Brian Curtis short weekday courses. As part of the learning process each student will make a frame designed specifically for use in Africa. Once graduated students will be able to use The Bicycle Academy workshop to hone their skills and build their own frames.
Now, to get the project up and running (to buy brazing stations, a lathe, a pillar drill, jigs and a full complement of bike tools etc) we ran a crowd funding campaign from the 1st of November to the 13th of December 2011. We successfully raised over 100% of our crowd funding goal meaning that we’re now able to get started and plan to open by spring 2012.
#TuesdayTrio
Feb
Ok, so this is really last Friday’s #VendrediVideo in disguise, but that doesn’t matter… as I’ve got three great little videos for you. First up I found that this one just made me smile. 28 is a chandelier designed and hand made in Canada. Design by Omer Arbel for Bocci. Video by Gwenael Lewis for [...]
#VendrediVideo – Hand Made Volume
Feb
Two videos this week are both about hand made goodness, one frame building and the other leather goods. It’s interesting that the term hand made is often only thought about as meaning low volume and yet Orange Bikes (not a small bicycle company) make all their bikes by hand here in the UK. I really [...]
Busman’s Holiday
Feb
Last week I built my first ever lugged bicycle frame and forks – a classic audax frame made from Columbus Spirit tubing. I built the frame at Downland Cycles in Canterbury under the tuition of Bryan Jackson and Martyn Hay. I first met Bryan at last year’s Bespoked Bristol where he pre-booked 2 fillet brazing course [...]
#VendrediVideo – Frame building, Sword making and riding bikes.
Feb
Three videos this week, each one submitted from a different person: First up this little treat made and sent in by Sarah Kinney (who shot the Atavistic Urge too) A chat with the frame builder Lance Mercado of Squarebuilt. This version is what screened at the Bike film fest. Next up, this wonderful submision from [...]
A little experiment…
Jan
Although not something that we’ll focus on at The Bicycle Academy (at least not for a while) I thought that it would be cool to lern to build with Lugs, so that’s what I’ve been doing this week. It’s been great fun and I’ve learned loads … I’ll write up more about the whole experience [...]
#VendrediVideo – Motomethod and Kilroy
Jan
This video was sent to me during the week by a friend of mine (and TBA backer) John Malcomson ‘Malco’ of Bolehills coolness. It’s so exciting to hear about other similar projects that exist out there, projects that create community and allow people to do stuff that they otherwise wouldn’t get to do. I love [...]
Radio Silence…
Jan
Sorry for the radio silence recently, I needed to take a breather after such an intense period leading up to and during the crowd-funding effort. Truth is it took a lot out of me and spat me out the other side, I was working from 9:00am until 03:30am almost every day for 3 months on [...]
We’ve been selected as a top 20 start-up of 2011!
