Lets Ride!

With a growing bicycle culture in Los Angeles, many youth from low-income communities have been playing a big role in the ever growing  bicycle culture . How exciting this may be  many of these communities lack alternative transportation education, that goes beyond the knowledge of taking a bus. However, with adequate education and organizing, many of our youth have the ability to be well informed  of the responsibility one has when riding a bike, such as bike maintenance, safety, and how to advocate for a bike friendly environment in their own communities.

Thus, City of Lights teamed up with LA CAUSA’s Youth Build in January 2012 to develop Lets Ride, a community-learning program that revolved around bicycles as a means of alternative form of transportation. Andy, Miguel, and Brenda, key volunteers from City of Lights developed a curriculum that focused on bike mechanics, bike safety, bike ride organizing, bike related public service announcements, and finally, bicycle advocacy. With this program, we promoted the use of cycling and how to keep the youth of East Los Angeles aware of the hazards when cycling within their community and how to develop into leaders that can advocate for a bike friendly environment.

 

Precaucion Tambien Tú Familia Usa la Bicicleta: The Making of a PSA

When looking at the ethnic make up of Los Angeles and those who ride bicycles it becomes crucial to provide a bicycle educational resource in other languages other than just English. The language barrier for Los Angeles’ large portion of Spanish speaking cyclists is an issue City of Lights has long recognized.

Therefore, we worked with day laborer cyclists to create an educational tool that allows Spanish speaking cyclists and motorists to be aware of sharing the road here in Los Angeles. We were able to create a bus shelter and video PSA in Spanish that was completely driven by the day laborer cyclists. The main idea is to provide a Spanish language public service announcement that would be displayed throughout Los Angeles County, to continue our efforts of recognizing a population that exists within the bicycle culture but often goes overlooked.

The initial process was to come up with a message that would be relevant amongst the Spanish speaking community, and we thought, what better way of promoting a relevant message than working with actual Spanish speaking cyclists? In 2011, we started this campaign by organizing day laborers and facilitating meetings that allowed them to be the voice behind the message that was going to be shown throughout bus shelter ads in Los Angeles. The initial meetings consisted of developing a message that would not only speak out to cyclists but motorists as well. The guys (as we call them) ended up brainstorming 25 different, original messages with everyone’s input.

After the initial meetings of developing the messaging, we began to narrow the amount of messages to eventually come up with one. We took these final messages to three talented graphic designers who worked pro bono to make illustrations that would give a visual to the messaging. After the day laborers chose their preferred design, we then met up with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to finalize and print the PSA. The rest is history.  To learn more about the process view the video below.

Tu Familia Campaign Behind the Scenes – LACBC, REI, City of Lights from Melograna Media on Vimeo.

Not only was this project a success with the completion of the poster, but we also were able to make a video public service announcement that ties into the same message., which we hope to get distributed on major Spanish language television networks within the next year.

 

City of Lights November Newsletter

Be sure to check out the City of Lights Newsletter for November!

 

City of Lights September Newsletter

Hey folks, check out the City of Lights September Newsletter for upcoming events, news, and info on how to get involved!  Click below for the PDF in English or Spanish.

Feel free to pass around and share!

September 2011 Newsletter – English

September 2011 Newsletter – Spanish

 

 

BiciDigna ride to Celebrate 7th St. Bike Lane next week on August 19th!

The 7th St. Bike Lane is Coming next month!!!! BiciDigna invites you to our ride to Levitt Pavillion to raise awareness and celebrate with us on Friday, August 19 @ 5 pm.

Meet at Lincoln Park: El Parque de Mexico on the corner of Main and Mission to Macarthur Park’s Levitt Pavilion to listen to the music of Mariachi Los Reyes.

We’ll be accepting monetary donations, bicycles, and parts in general. See you there!!!!

 

City of Lights partners with LA Conservation Corps to engage youth to advocate for more bike lanes in South LA!

Last Thursday, on July 28th, City of Lights did the first of a series of presentations around the Bike Plan and bikeways 101 for low-income cyclists at the LA Conservation Corps’ Headquarters High School. There were 15 attendees. The 18-24 year old youth who attended all lived or worked in parts of South and East LA.  In pop-ed style, after a brief explanation of bikeway terminology, we broke out into conversation with the youth about their experiences in biking, in which many expressed speeding traffic, truckers, a lack of bike lanes, and feeling so unsafe that they had to get back on the sidewalk.

Allison and Andy presenting at the Conservation Corps

The youth then drew out on a map of Downtown and South LA what destinations they frequented, the routes they took, and the streets they wished had bike lanes. After this, they voted on their top priorities of the list of over 10 streets. We hope to revisit the Conservation Corps soon to gather more feedback from other cyclists/students. The gathered feedback will be submitted to the Department of City Planning and DOT.

Youth marking up the maps!

This is part of a bigger effort of City of Lights’ to bring more participatory, inclusive bike planning to low-income cyclists who may be riding every day, but unaware of the bike plan or how to voice their concerns. We hope to partner with other organizations in high need, low-income neighborhoods, to do similar workshops, so that a local, diverse bike movement is grown!

Dominique--A lucky winner in raffle after presentation!!

 

 

This Sunday: Bici Digna and Corazon del Pueblo SOLIDARITY RIDE!

Join us this Sunday at 11am as Corazon del Pueblo and Bici Digna join up to bring you the Solidarity Ride – a chance for us to celebrate our communities and our work on a chill Sunday afternoon.

It’s a $5 donation to ride and participate in the raffle at the end – five lucky people are going to win some bikes!  So come on over, Sunday June 26th, at Hollenbeck Park at 11am.  We’ll be riding over to MacArthur Park and back again.

Yay!

Solidarity Ride flier - feel free to print and share!