Building alongside Ghana Bamboo Bikes: the Imagine Bamboo Summit, Birmingham

Standfirst: Bamboo Bicycle Club doesn't work in isolation. In July 2022 we joined an international gathering of bamboo makers in Birmingham — sharing the field with Ghana Bamboo Bikes and engineers, artists and growers from across the world.

The context

Bamboo as a building material has quietly drawn together a global community — engineers, artists, social enterprises and craftspeople from the UK, India, Ghana and Bali. In the UK, much of that conversation runs through the Bamboo in the UK Group, organised by artistic director Orit Azaz, a regular collaborator of ours.

One of the most visible expressions of that movement was the Imagine Bamboo Summit: a free, four-day outdoor celebration in Sunset Park, Ladywood, Birmingham, from 1–4 July 2022, produced by Imagineer and presented as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival. It brought together international contributors — including Ghana Bamboo Bikes, founded by Bernice Dapaah in Kumasi — alongside makers from Bali (BambooU) and India (Rhizome), the structural engineers Atelier One and Arup, and NoFit State Circus, for bamboo building, performance and live demonstrations.

What we did

Bamboo Bicycle Club took part as a contributor to the summit. The organiser's own thank-you to its collaborators names Bamboo Bicycle Club directly, alongside Ghana Bamboo Bikes and the other international partners — putting two organisations that build rideable bikes from a plant in the same Birmingham park, for the same audience.

It was the kind of room we belong in: people who teach with their hands and believe a bicycle can be grown rather than only manufactured. Ghana Bamboo Bikes ran bamboo bike-building demonstrations across the weekend; we shared the same field and the same crowd.

What we can verify

The summit ran 1–4 July 2022 in Ladywood, Birmingham, produced by Imagineer for the Birmingham 2022 Festival. Bamboo Bicycle Club and Ghana Bamboo Bikes are both named among its contributors. Beyond this one festival, Bamboo Bicycle Club has trained 4,000+ people since 2012, across 36+ countries.

Why it matters

The point isn't a single festival. It's that building a bike from a plant is an idea with reach — practical, low-carbon, and shared by people in very different places for very different reasons. Ghana Bamboo Bikes uses it to get children to school and to create jobs in Kumasi; we use it for rehabilitation, education and craft. Same material, same belief that anyone can make something extraordinary with their hands.

Proof and links

• Imagine Bamboo Summit, Birmingham 2022 Festival, Sunset Park, Ladywood, 1–4 July 2022 — imagine-bamboo.co.uk (contributor list names Bamboo Bicycle Club)
• Ghana Bamboo Bikes — ghanabamboobikes.org
• Bamboo in the UK Group (Orit Azaz)