Build kits that travel: how bamboo bike-building reaches schools we never visit
Bamboo Bicycle Club started in a small Hackney workshop in 2012, proving that anyone can build a bicycle frame by hand. The thing that let that idea travel was the build kit: a box of materials and a portable approach to teaching that a group can use without us in the room.
What we do
We design our build kits and our jig-and-tool teaching setup so a group with no specialist tools and no prior experience can build a bamboo frame. The instruction is structured around the points that trip beginners up — choosing the bamboo, cutting tube angles, preparing and wrapping the joints — with guidance at each stage.
That is what makes the schools offer scalable. A school in Surrey, a project overseas, or a community group can run a bamboo build whether or not a BBC facilitator is physically present. Home-build kits have shipped worldwide since the early years of the club, and the schools programme today runs as a tiered offer: a free intro session, a reusable class kit with teacher CPD, and a site licence for schools that want to run it themselves year on year.
Two real school projects
The Hague. Pupils at a school in The Hague built bamboo bikes with our kit — a genuine overseas school project, recorded in our own club news at the time.
Reed's School, Cobham (Surrey). Reed's ran a bamboo bike project as part of its sixth-form engineering elective: a group of students built bamboo bikes over the year, finishing with an end-of-term ride where the bikes were put to the test on a multi-lap course. It is exactly the kind of hands-on, design-and-build project the kit is made for.
Why it matters
The model is simple and it is real: a kit that travels, plus a way of teaching that travels with it, means hands-on bamboo bike-building can reach far more young people than any single workshop ever could.
Links
- Schools and education: https://bamboobicycleclub.org/blogs/schools-and-education
- The Hague school project: https://bamboobicycleclub.org/blogs/schools-and-education/the-hague-school-project-seven-bikes-in-a-classroom
- Reed's School end-of-term bamboo racing: https://bamboobicycleclub.org/blogs/schools-and-education/reeds-school-end-of-term-bamboo-racing