Volunteer With Us!

Broken Spoke’s DIY sessions have a teaching focus. Our aim is for folks to learn how to fix and maintain their own cycles.

If you are wondering about whether or not you are experienced enough to volunteer, we’d encourage you to try to not to focus on cycle mechanics. Instead, consider these questions:

• Are you able to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds in a calm, friendly & patient way?
• Do you have experience of solving simple problems with basic tools (not necessarily cycle mechanics)?
• Do you have experience of listening to instructions and helping folks to put them into practice?
• Do you have experience with, or an interest in, hands-off approaches to learning and teaching?

Experience with cycle mechanics is not required to volunteer. Cycle mechanics is the route through which people learn how to fix stuff and use tools at Broken Spoke, so some knowledge will be helpful for you — though not essential to begin. Volunteering with us is one route to gaining mechanics experience.

If your preference is to work directly on cycles yourself, then volunteering in DIY sessions might not be for you. We’re working on increasing opportunities to fix bikes yourself and we ask that you sign up to our newsletter here, or keep an eye on our website for updates.

At the moment, several aspects of Broken Spoke’s volunteering programme are in development and not yet fully defined. Volunteering with us at the moment will likely require from you a willingness to ask questions, make requests for information or action, and a pro-active approach (e.g. checking in with a list of volunteer to-dos, checking in with the person running the session etc). The workshop can be a busy and potentially intimidating environment – it can also be really fun!

If you think that this would be too big a challenge for you, please consider waiting to begin volunteering — we are working on increasing support for volunteers so there will likely be an opportunity to join in the future. Do keep an eye on our website or sign up to our newsletter to stay in the loop.

This might all sound a bit off-putting, don’t despair! There are lots of wonderful people who are involved with Broken Spoke, and many lasting friendships have been made, super cycle rides ridden, and wizardry mechanical fixes uncovered. There is definitely space for you to contribute to that too!

We ask that volunteers can give a minimum of 6 hours per month of their time to Broken Spoke activities (e.g. two 3 hour DIY sessions, or Beryl’s Nights, class support, meetings, community events).

We are working with an assumption that active participation is essential to building a fixing & cycling community, a sense of belonging, effective learning, and developing skills. Please reflect on what time commitment is realistic for you. If you can’t commit to the minimum time at the moment, please consider contacting us again in the future when you can.