Saturday 16 March 2013

Manchester Day Bike Parade Plans

The GMCC entry in the Manchester Day Parade is coming together. Artist/maker, Julian Taylor is building a giant bike, and we need your help to build the giant bike rider.

Our outline plan for the theme of Wish You Were Here is Wish You Were Here on your bike . Rather than a demo or the like, this will be an open invitation to the crowd to join us on their bikes in Manchester. The sculpture will be the centrepiece of the entry. It needs to be tall enough to get up above the heads of the crowd to be seen. We are thinking of putting it on a large bike trailer, but that may change.

The current plan is that we will have one or two cargo bikes carrying sound systems and pulling the sculpture.We may then be able to have around 30 - 40 places for people on pedal cycles. At this stage I think it would be good to have groups of 4 or 5 people representing different ways in which people can cycle. So for example, we could have representation from Tweed Ride on historic machines, a road club in colours, bikes in bloom with flowers in baskets, fixies, shopper bikes, lowriders or whatever....

The point being that everyone in the crowd should be able to identify with at least one person in the parade and think, yes, that's how I want to cycle. This was inspired by meeting someone at work who had just taken up cycling to work this week. Her shiny new, and rather stylish bike had been turning heads in the bike shed all week. It was a case of finding someone who had just decided to cycle, wearing smart clothes to go with the stylish bike and was clearly enjoying the experience.

Now, this is where we need help. To make this parade work well I will need at least around 50 people to be there on the day to ride bikes. We will also need help with the building of the sculpture and its infrastructure, to coordinate the project, sort out sound systems etc.

We need help on Sunday 19th May building the rider.

Location:
Unit 4a Manchester Industrial Estate
New Elm Road
Off Water Street
Manchester
M3 4JW

From 11 to 1am and from 2 till 5pm.

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