Before the students, the teachers: a bamboo build day at King's College London
Bamboo Bicycle Club ran a hands-on bike-building workshop with teaching staff at King's College London, exploring whether frame building could find a place inside the university.
The idea
Most of our education work puts a saw and a length of bamboo into a student's hands. But when a university is weighing up whether building a bicycle frame belongs in its teaching, the people who need to feel it first are the staff who would deliver it. So we started with them.
What we did
We brought the workshop to King's College London and ran it for teaching personnel as a practical session — the same process a student would go through, from preparing bamboo through to a finished frame. The point was simple: let the people who teach experience the build before deciding whether to introduce it to their students.
The conversation was about introducing bike building into the university, with the staff session as a first practical step rather than a finished programme.
In our own words
"We've been working with King College London to look at introducing bike building into the university. Here is an interesting build built during a practice workshop with teaching personnel."
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— Bamboo Bicycle Club
Why it matters
Building a bamboo frame is a way of handling materials science, sustainable making and craft all at once — which is exactly why it travels from a workshop bench into schools, community spaces and, here, a university. Starting with the teachers is how a single build day becomes something a department can carry forward.
Proof and links
- Original post: King's College London bamboo staff workshop
- More on our education and university work: bamboobicycleclub.org/blogs/schools-and-education
Note: the original blog text refers to "King College London"; the institution's correct name is King's College London. The quote above is reproduced exactly as BBC published it.