The teacher who wanted his pupils to build, not just be shown

When Nick Mills, Head of Design Technology at The Oratory School, set out to give his pupils something different, he didn't ask for a one-off visit. He asked us to help run bamboo bike building inside the school, with his own department, as part of school life.

The challenge

Most design and technology lessons stop at the drawing. Pupils learn about materials and structures on paper, but rarely get to take a raw material and turn it into something they can ride away on. Nick Mills wanted his students at The Oratory School, near Reading, to do exactly that, and to make it a recurring part of what the department offered rather than a single enrichment day.

What we did

We worked with The Oratory School to set up bamboo bike building inside the school's Design Technology department, with room for three builders to work at a time. James Marr and Russell Hollie led the sessions alongside Nick Mills and his department. The launch ran on the afternoon of Saturday 29 February 2020, opening the workshop to pupils and parents first, with a limited number of places held back for the wider public.

From there it ran as a series of hands-on builds, taught by the people who teach the craft every day rather than dropped in and taken away again.

Why it matters

Building a bike from raw bamboo is slow, hands-on work. You measure, you mitre, you bind and you wait for the joints to cure. For a young person, finishing a frame you've made yourself, and then riding it, is a different kind of learning from anything that fits on a worksheet. Running that inside a school, with the department's own staff, means each group gets the real thing on their own site.

Across fourteen years we've taught more than 4,000 people to build, in over 36 countries, since 2012. The Oratory work is part of how we bring that into education: pupils doing the real thing, with their own teachers.

In their words

"I'm very excited that James Marr and Russell Hollie, have agreed to begin the first-ever Bamboo Bicycle Club in a school. This is something that will make The Oratory School unique. There is not another school in the UK with this as an option for its students or the public."

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— Nick Mills, Head of Design Technology, The Oratory School

Proof & links

• Original announcement: The Oratory School Launches a Bamboo Bike Workshop — bamboobicycleclub.org
• Schools & education programmes: get in touch at info@bamboobicycleclub.org