The Bicycle Academy – help to get this off the ground

I want to bring to your attention a fantastic project that has started up in Frome. It’s been set up by Andrew Denham, the man who brought us the Cobble Wobble uphill bicycle race.

It’s called The Bicycle Academy – at its heart it’s a framebuilding course, but it’s really much more than that. It’s a way of standardising bikes and parts for Africa where a bicycle is a lifeline for many people. It’s a bicycle workshop, it’s a supplier of bike building parts and a source of excellent bike-building advice.

Or at least it will be if Andrew and Brian can raise the funds to get it off the ground. This is where they need your help with crowdsourced funding.

“A place to learn how to make bikes. You keep the skills, your first bike goes to someone who really needs it.

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 as evening classes or 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 we’re crowd funding The Bicycle Academy and that’s why we need your help. Our crowd funding campaign started on the 1st of November and will finish on the 13th of December. We’ve got the workshop, but haven’t got anything to fill it with – We need to buy brazing stations, a lathe, a pillar drill, jigs and a full complement of bike tools, so please support us by making a pledge”

Visit the site http://www.thebicycleacademy.org/ and if you like what you see, make a pledge. There are lots of different scales of pledge and every little bit helps, you only pay the money if the target amount is reached. Help get this amazing project off the ground.