CYCLING & COMMUNITY and SIGNS OF LIFE hosted by Charlotte Cole-Hossain and Marta Cooper
6:00 pm - Cycling & Community with Abigail & Lilith (Gears for Queers) and Muneera Pilgrim (@blackwomenmuslimbike)
Imagining the broadest and most welcoming possible version of a cycling community. What would it be like and how do we make it happen?
Abi (she/they) and Lilith (they/them) are a queer couple who ride bikes, write books and make zines together. Lilith grew up cycling around their hometown of Cambridge and, when they met, transplanted Abigail's desire to walk the world onto two wheels. Gears for Queers is their first book - born out of a series of vegan recipe zines from their first cycle tour. They live in Fife, Scotland. You can check out their zines here.
Muneera Pilgrimfrom @blackmuslimwomenbike is an international Poet, Cultural Producer, Writer, Broadcaster, and TEDx speaker. In early 2020 Muneera cofounded Black Muslim Women Bike along with Sabah Ahmed. They did so after getting back on the saddle for the first time since childhood. Throughout this time, they have come to realise through the intersection of their visible identities, their platform has the ability to encourage and inspire those who are less represented. Despite being in different countries, they have already done a 30-day challenge where they managed to raise £1400 pounds for a maternity and pediatric ward in Senegal.
7:00 pm - Signs of Life: To the Ends of the Earth with a Doctor
When Stephen Fabes left his job as a junior doctor and set out to cycle around the world, frontline medicine quickly faded from his mind. Of more pressing concern were the daily challenges of life as an unfit rider on an overloaded bike, helplessly in thrall to pastries.
But leaving medicine behind is not as easy as it seems. As he roves continents, he finds people whose health has suffered through exile, stigma or circumstance, and others, whose lives have been saved through kindness and community.
Stephen will be sharing his experiences and remarkable photographs from his epic journey.
As a teenager, Stephen Fabes cycled the length of Chile with his younger brother, Ronan, a journey that inspired him to begin a bicycle journey around the world. In 2010 he set off from St Thomas' Hospital in central London, where he was working as a junior doctor, and over six years he pedalled the length of six continents, covering more than 53,000 miles by bicycle through 75 countries - more than twice the circumference of the earth - crossing Mongolia in the winter and spending more than a thousand nights rough camping by roadsides.
Buy all the books at the Virtual Velofete bookshop uk.bookshop.org
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