Organise BT 2010

Route

Consensus

At the moment we are re-discussing a weak online consensus to go to Ecotopia 2010 near Berlin – We are open for ideas about other action camps. There is a strong online consensus to go to the "Towards Carfree Cities Conference" (TCCC)[[1]] in York/UK, probably cycling before and after. WCN [[2]], organizers of TCCC, were really enthusiastic to join forces :-) you can read some reasons to take the UK route from a chat protocol

Collection of alternative Camps

As going to ecotopia or not is in the discussion at the moment, we have to look out for other places to go. Please add which activist camps, festivals, summer camps you know which could be a possible destination.

Activist/Ecologist Events/camps

Here is an amazing list of activist events on or near the general route(s) we are talking about between May & August, put together by Laura. Add anything else that you hear about:

• 26 - 28 May 2010 Global Carbon Market Fair & Conference, Cologne, Germany

• 31 May - 11 Jun 2010 UNFCCC First sessional period in 2010 Bonn, Germany (united nations climate change talks)

• 12th June Naked bikeride, London, England [3]

• 19th June Naked Bikeride, Brussels, Belgium (to be confirmed)

• 23rd June - 24th August: Baltic Sea Info Tour, Nuclear Heritage [4] to raise awareness aginast radioactive polution of the baltic sea

• 25th June Critical Mass, London, England

• 28 June - 1 July 2010 Towards Carfree Cities Conference IX - York, England

• 2nd July - Otesha project starts cycling, Lands End, Cornwall, England

• 1-4 July 2010 "Velorution Universelle" a big critical mass in Paris, France [5]

• 3 July - 15 August "AlterTour" tour-de-france for a non-doped planet, France [6]

• 1-6 july 2010 YOUPEC Geel, Antwerp, Belgium

• 23-25 July The Big Tent, Falkland, Fife, Scotland

• 30th July Critical Mass, London

• 1-21st August Ecotopia, Flaeming, Germany

• 27th september - 5th of october No borders camp, brussels. Probably interesting for people who want to travel on after BT.

• ongoing: Rossport Shell to Sea solidarity camp, Ireland [7]
• ongoing (right now, at least!) Mainshill Solidarity Camp, southern scotland [8]

Dates not set yet:

• Camp Action Climat (french climate camp [9]) near Caen, France. Has a meeting the same weekend as our Mainz meeting !!

• The UK Climate Camp regional groups are meeting right now (Jan & Feb) - it's very possible that there will be several summer Climate Camps across the UK in 2010 but we don't know yet.

• Reclaim the Fields [10] maybe France, maybe Hungary..

• Earth First! Summer Camp, somewhere in the UK. But it seems its not clear where and when it will be so far. At least I didn´t find any information about it. Niklas maybe knows more soon. Earth First! has a winter meeting in early Feb, maybe we can find some more information after that [11]

Next Questions for the UK route

Now we need to figure out, how to cross the channel.

• There is the ferry from Hull, UK to Hook-of-Holland or Brugge, which is 44 pounds per person

How many km would that be ? How would the route look like ?

• There might be a train ticket from London to Amsterdam for 29€, Jan heard rumors about it and is following it up
• It is possible to hitchhike ferries – we could reserve some days for it, so the whole group has time to give it a try. Who could check out, which ferries work well, how it works and stuff ?
• We could also ask the ferry company to sponsor us, give some free transport or at least a discount. Someone up for checking that out ? Maybe we should wait with that till our website looks fresh.

• We also need ideas how to come to the tour, how to reach York or any other starting point by cheap bike friendly transport on the surface, as there are the German wochenend ticket, mitfahrzentralen/ ride sharing, night train offers, the Czech bus student agency (do they take bikes?) Who wants to expand the list and fill it with details ?

• any ideas about where to start earlier or where to head after ecotopia? ?

I heard Laura mention Scotland.

• Possible Partners/ Interesting Places on that road – please add your ideas and the answers u got:

• • who would like to coordinate the Tour in The Netherlands ? We have quite some dutch people on the bt-org list. It is the bike country of Europa, with Groningen as best example city – 50% of all trips on bike. In Groningen there is Marij, a bt-veteran and other ecotopia people. Janneke´s mother wants to help out with the route! we can contact her as far we know that we will go to the netherlands.

• • We need contacts in the UK. There is Mark who is ready for national coordinating, also Kristina a former BT-participant wants to help out. Barry – well he is Irish, but still. Ask WCN for contacts ? http://otesha.org.uk/ ? London Critical Mass ? The organizers/hosts of the 2002 tour ? This massive bikesoundsystem, what was the name again ?

• • in Germany we can cooperate with janun[[12]] for lower Saxony. Someone up to coordinate things ? Jan has the contact of Arne, a janun and bt veteran. Also there is the wendland on the way, a region which resists an atomic waste dump since decades. And the ecovillage „sieben Linden“ could be on the route. Jan and Moritz currently live in Germany.

• • What about Belgium ? Luxembourg ? Jan has good contacts there. Bt has never been there, at least not this millennium. But its hilly and a bit out of the way.

Other Route Ideas

here is a list of the other ideas we had on Route 2010. if u want to give one of them energy, please do so on the bt-org list or write to info@ecotopiabiketour.net

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).
• 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.

http://otesha.org.uk/ another bikeprojekt is once agin travelling trough the UK this summer. There was the idea to connect with them, maybe to meet on the way. Juhu!

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 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

we have 4 people who said they would help on a voluntary basis: Jan, Laura, Moritz and Pablo. Anyone else ? Yo is interrested in helping out in the dutch part.. sapi and milan showed interest to meet in in prague to talk things through – anyone wants to join ?

As an evs volunteer is not in sight til now we would need to reach out for participants, who want to join organisational effords. Someone wants to write call for these. We can also offer evs positions – starting in mai.

Evs

we had evs volunteers working for biketour the last years. Experience shows, that its great to have 2 of them. But no evs volunteer worked out for the 1.11. deadline. Next deadline is 1.2., so starting to work 1.5.. it can be 2 to 12 months service that would give us a full time working person for the hottest phase just before the tour. The only candidate is laura, but she did not state jet, if that is an option for her. But she is interested to do then evs for next year, the 2011 tour.

possible hosting organisations

• wcn: they have physical space in the office in prague, but have already their max number of volunteers as hosting organisation – another hosting org would be needed. Prague is not on the route, but the spain/portugal tour has been organized from there as well

• eyfa in amsterdam is rather a sending organisation and they have no space in the office.
• maybe falkor in groningen could be convinced to host someone – jan has the contact to marij

• in germany, jup bad oldesloe could be asked to host, with the volunteer maybe being located somewhere else, near to the ecotopia? organiziers, who do not have a hosting org. wam from the ecotopia? team said, that would be possible.

• luxembourg/life/queesch/infoladen. Might be possible for the 1.2. deadline, but would need good preparation, no option for a last minute thing, as they would have to discuss it first and the go through some administrative processes.

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

meetings in person are the most important meetings we can have. Lets meet as often as possible, whenever 2 or more people into organizing have the chance to meet somewhere. Two suggestions for meeting in the next time :

• WCN:Grassroots Capacity Building Seminar in Prague, November 4–6, 2009 or the wcn annual meeting just after: sapi and milan
• during cop15

Funding

who is taking care for funding ? We do not need a lot, but a bit of money is always good to have.

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 !