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.

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.

Feel free to pass around and share!

September 2011 Newsletter – English

September 2011 Newsletter – Spanish

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!!!!

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!!

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!

Check out this video for a glimpse of one of Bici Digna’s mobile bicycle workshops!

Bici Digna will be doing mobile bicycle workshops at the CARECEN Day Labor Center every first Saturday of the month, as well as at several other locations throughout the month.  Check out the Bici Digna blog for more info!

City of Lights Newsletter – June 2011

Boletin de Ciudad de Luces -Junio 2011

This Sunday, May 22 City of Lights is going to be hosting a ride from Hollenbeck Park to MacArthur Park along 7th St.  We’re excited about the Bike Master Plan’s inclusion of 7th St in its work to get more miles of bike lanes painted in the city.  Hopefully you’ll join us on the ride so we can celebrate these efforts, raise awareness, and have a little fun!

We’ll be meeting at the corner of St. Louis and Inez, the southeast corner of Hollenbeck Park, at 11:30am, and taking off by noon.  For more info, please contact Miguel Ramos at (626) 375-6799.