Organise BT 2010

Organising Biketour 2010 „20th Anniversary“

Route

Overview

The Ecotopia Biketour will move from Northern England, through France, Belgium, (maybe the Netherlands) and Germany. One of our biggest stops will be the Camp Action Climat, close to Le Havre from the 22 July - 1 August. Rough route on googlemaps: [1]

Laura put the info on this working page: Route 2010

The Tour

here is the space to put ideas about the 2010 tour in general

Content/ Slogan

On sat 16 january there was a brainstorm chat on skype about a theme for BT2010, read the full chat here. summary: theme proposals nuclear, climate justice, traffic, link theme to biodiversity, renewable sources of energy ? Climate justice could be a general theme where all other things can fit in/are related to. Everyone in chat was interested in this theme. Disadvantage of a wide theme is too loose focus, maybe its good to chose one angle. Climate justice has it a set stamp of ideologies, and actions to take, according to Laura, she would love to give a workshop about it! More ideas connected to Climate justice as theme could be:

• the idea to meet with indigenous people from the global south and link BT to their experiences: to take their voices with us (as they probably can not join us, but should be heard). (laura wants to add here: she didn't mean indigenous people from global south -indigenous people, but also/and/or voices from global south)
• to link climate justice to practical stuff like recycling food, materials etc
• to address the green-washing problem: the problem of presenting renewables as green capitalist solution, the problem of carbon trading
• focus on voluntary simplicity, on using less, on people self.organization.... (we could make up a set of principals that consumption matters..)
• fits well to french climate camp (which could be our destination)

older notes: i am especially excited about the opportunity to give some profound content to bt, with wcn help. we will travel a lot of towns, where the bike is already used a lot. but still there is such a long way to go for people to live sustainable ! "towards carfree cities" as a possible motto for the tour - but with a comprehensive website and good material to present this during the tour. i love the carbusters magazine, we would have to make a "best off" in the format of a biketour, a travelling exhibition with interactive elements called actions  ;)

to have bt starting for days before the conference and let it be embedded in the conferences press strategie - a more close cooperation than ever, bt being more integral part of the conference

Action/Theater/Propaganda

inspired by [otesha] I would really like to see some preparation of an action, something creative, some theater play or such. Such creative work as a theater play is sooo good for group dynamics and so much fun. It would need one person, who wants to come to the start and knows a bit about theater, to work with the group on the piece, creating something which people coming later can easily join. More ideas include: To carry an exhibition, to carry a slide show, to prepare some workshops for the participants as well as for the public – all connected to the theme “towards carfree cities”

Janneke´s mother wants to help out with the route, sleeping places.. in the north of the netherlands (Friesland). She could prepare an action there against a highway.

Calais – moritz has some friends who are involved in actions and initatives trying to help the refugees whos camps are destroyed in Calais France. If we´re crossing the ocean from the UK to France that could be a stop for an action/helping out. I will ask my friends if they could imagine to prepare something or at least ask other people who maybe would like to have a nice biketour around and are willing to organise something. Could be connected to the topic climate refugees.

Seeds for Change Lancaster (a workers' coop offering activist trainings), they'd be up for giving us consensus, facilitation and other workshops as long as it is during the week, because summer weekends always are really busy.

Office Backup

it would be really great, if the tour would have a office backup while traveling, someone who has all the modern communication channels open for the people on tour, do a bit press work, answe the phone and mail, update the website, upload photos and stuff like that. Who would like to do that ?

Veterans

we could invite all the old people. Hey karl or mihail, is that not something for u ? we should also still have the kids trailor around somewhere, no ?

Staff

at the moment there is no payed staff. We do not have a club or ngo behind us. Just a group of more or less engaged volunteers. Should we change that ?

Volunteers

Moritz & Laura are our international co-ordinators for 2010.

Moritz will be based in Mainz, Germany and Laura will be doing EVS with FoE FLanders & Brussels, being based in Gent, Belgium from beginning of March 2010. Her main project there will be co-ordinating BT 2010!

Mark is [one of?] regional co-ordinators for England, based in London.

We need:

• Tech/computer-savvy volunteer

Jobs

we have quite a lot of job opportunities to offer :) smaller areas of the project, where u would be the right person to take responsibility:

• coordinating a bit of the route
• take care of our outreach during the tour: flyer, poster, website content, prepare an action, prepare a theater piece, prepare actions, prepare workshop to be given to the tour members or to the public
• coordinate the outreach for participants and organizers
• maintain the website
• style/desing the website, leaflets, posters...
• raise funds
• take care about visa
• overall coordination – done at the moment by laura and jan – are u interested ?
• backup office
• presswork
• bring bt to social networks like facebook and keep it updated there

Meetings

Things are moving!

• Skype meetings (calls or chats) are happening weekly. Email laura [a] ecotopiabiketour.net if you want to join the next call & can't find the details!

• Face-to-face Wintermeeting happened in February: The extensive minutes are here: Winter meeting minutes February 2010

• Laura & Moritz went to the french climate camp meeting in Angers

• Moritz & Laura will hopefully meet for a week in middle of April, in Gent.

• We would like to have a meeting in London, Lille or Le Havre for the Biketour with regional organisers/co-ordinators before the tour starts!

Funding

Yo & mark are looking into funding so far.

We can alway ask small funds like x-y (any other ? more details ?) who already know us from previous years - so we have template applications to be inspired by. Do you want to write an application ?

Another way of DIY fund raising is to get a party or concert going and cook some food in your local squat or social center. offer us your profit and also ask people to donate for biketour. Jan will ask the vienna critical mass to do such a party.

You can go to ur local bikestore and ask for a donation - well we could make this quite big and ask bigger companies for sponsoring. there are so many adventurers getting their bike trips sponsored, so why would it not work for us. we can ask for money or equipment.

Then there is x-mas, where everyone loves to donate money. you could ask people doing that to donate for bt instead.

Outreach

before the tour

we want to attract people to come to the tour and to help organizing. lets start now. we should concentrate on the countries we will pass, but it is also good to do it ur your environment, in all possibly interested networks. talk to people about biketour, hand out leaflets at your next (bicycle) demonstration/concert hang up posters about it in your local bikestore, anarchist bookshop, squat, bio-shop, community center, free shop...

online outreach should include couch surfing, warm showers, wcn, eyfa, facebook, critical mass forums, cyclotourism forums do you know any others ?

we should announce our route, date and that we are an international collective based on volunteers. what biketour is about and that we are looking for participants who already now join effords to organize, as well as hosts and people who would potentially want to organise BT 2011 !