CoMTB Seminar – February

In this seminar we discuss e-mountain bikes, disability, trail building, and ecologies of practice.

Jim Cherrington (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) On the relationship between EMTB, Disability and Green Exercise

Liam Healy (Sheffield University, UK). On Trail Building and Ecologies of Practice.

Okay can everybody see that yeah y lovely right um just to repeat everybody on the call for the benefit of maybe the two people that have just entered the room um I am recording the presentation um so please just bear that in mind if you want to turn your screen

Off then by all means do so but we we will be recording this and um as long as it’s okay with everybody we will also be uploading it to YouTube after the event for the benefit of those who can’t be joining us um hi everyone I think I know

Everybody on the call but in case you you don’t know me my name is Jim shingon I’m I’m the I’m a senior lecturer at Sheffield ham University and the co-founder sorry the founder of co- MTB um and this is CTB just to give a little

Bit of an overview of of what this um research group is we are the first research group of its kind really to focus EXP exclusively on why how and where mountain biking matters to people from around the world um we are an interdisciplinary culturally diverse and Global Group of researchers who a whose

Aim it is to understand the social cultural and political significance of mountain biking in contemporary societies um we’ve got lots of uh members from all over the world doing lots of interesting things in the world of mountain biking we’ve got um people with backgrounds in arts Community Development psychology sociology

Cultural studies journalism marketing and coaching and I guess the thing that binds us as individuals regardless of our background is um as you’ll see today we’re all passionate about helping organizations to address a range of um identities bodies environments and in inequalities among other things one of the methods we’ll be using

To do this is through this seminar series um and the series itself will take place as you’ll see from the um table on the right there it will take it will take place um four times a year this is the first of four um and every one of these sessions will take place

Online as part of a broader range of activities the aim of the seminar series is to to encourage evidence ined discussions between lots of different groups of people many of whom are um represented on this call already so we’ve got land land owners governing bodies sport Brands and policy makers as well as

Academics um and what we’d like to do as a group is to uh develop a kind of a joined up approach to finding applied solutions to some of the me many of the the world’s most pressing problems things like climate change colonialism land enclosure and so on and so

Forth so this week I’m really pleased to to say that we’ll be hearing from um Liam Healey who’s on the call I’ll let Liam introduce himself because I’m not a fan of introducing other people forly I’d much rather people do it s so so Liam I’ll leave Liam to introduce

Himself when his presentation starts and then I’ve also prepared a presentation to begin with around um the relationship between electronic Moun bikes disability and green exercise if you want to sign up and register for future events you can do so using the QR code down there on the

Bottom left hand side of the um of the table you can also use the the QR code at the bottom of the page there to access our website which contains information on um everybody involved in the group their disciplines their interest their backgrounds um what their relationship is with mountain biking as

Well as um various events that were involved in and Publications that we’ve currently got underway so that’s a really good source of information if you’re looking to keep up with the various activities that comtb are involved in um just a very very brief introduction to the the structure of the

Sessions I’m trying to keep the S sessions short and sweet because um I don’t you know appreciate the timing of these and you know not everybody uh can can kind of stick around for two or three hours so what I’ve done in each of the sessions and today is no different

Is I’ve organized each of the sessions around two 20 minute presentations um and half an hour of um of discussion with people in the audience so real emphasis there on making sure we have conversations about the the topics being presented because that is one of the main remits of

Cultures of of mountain biking so really Keen to get going with those those discussions feel free to ask any questions um either on the call if you if you feel confident enough to do so or via the chat which I’ll try and monitor once my presentation itself is

Finished okay so um Moving Straight on to to my presentation for today then um I want to talk today about the relationship between disability technology and green exercise um this stems from work I conducted during lockdown actually with 30 uh electric mountain bikers not all of whom had um

Disabilities but many of whom did and um what I’m really interested here is that is that kind of relationship between the technology of the elect electric mountain bike um how and in what ways it might help or hinder um uh physical activity exercise among disabled communities and disabled people

And specifically what that might tell us about exercise in green spaces um where of course as many of you know on the call there are lots of complexities and contestations around who should be there what objects should and shouldn’t be there uh and how we should police or manage um all of those

Things so initially just to give you an idea about where this came from um over the last decade or so now there’s been a a massive increase as you may have seen in the amount of research that’s dedicated specifically to um physical activity and mental health in the

Context of green exercise so so what green exercise can do to help improve both of those things this of course have been against a backdrop of uh a global decline especially in Western worlds in Western societies um of physical activity and of Mental Health and there’s a growing body of evidence

To suggest that green space can in certain ways play an important role in promoting physical activity especially within certain marginalized communities so to give an insight into this based on the research uh physically at least exercising in nature is said to reduce hypertension um boost the immune system

Um and uh delay the onset of pain as well so um kind of reduce the amount of pain that people are suffering with uh psychologically green physical activi claim to improve mood enhanced cognitive capacities lower anxiety and overall facility facilitate opportunities for self- nurturing and it’s against this backdrop

That uh many Advocates of green exercise exercise have understandably started to make really bold and big claims that about how green exercise can Empower people to take responsibility for their own health whilst also um and relatedly providing sustainable and more accessible forms of physical activity for future

Generations now I’m also a big advocate of that I think that’s great but the more this this uh emphasis on green exercise as a kind of catchall solution for physical and mental illness has gained momentum the more the social and cultural significance of Nature has been marginalized from these public

Debates so as um uh someone like Sarah Bell who writes a lot on this uh in relation to disability suggests as a result of this we don’t really we get carried away with the physical and mental benefits but we know we seem to know a lot less about how

Green spaces might play out in the lives of people for example who who suffer with impairments who have disabilities all the kinds of um constraining ableist assumptions that might underpin um the perceived most authentic way to to engage with the spaces so to put it really really simply with the exception of Sarah

Bell’s research on this which is great by the way there’s barely any research shockingly for me about how impaired exercises might experience Green’s faces and even less so less still on the how the experiences of disabled exercises is enabled or disabled by different forms of technology and between myself and James

Brighton who is the co-author and co-researcher on this paper we wanted to address this we wanted to look at this in a bit more detail it just felt like electric mountain bikes were a perfect um object to analyze in that respect so in this short presentation I

Just want to give an overview of the theoretical framework that guided the research I want to briefly comment on the data that we collected and then combine the two to try and examine how the theoretical framework that we adopted might have helped us to to reach certain conclusions about

E- mountain biking specifically but also the impacts both positive and negative that this technology is having on impaired users of green spaces so so why did we conduct This research then well um as I’ve already mentioned from the outset um tend we tend to focus uh despite having a really

Relatively good understanding now of of what mountain bikers are and what mountain bikers do 20% is estimated which is kind of greater or or lesser depending on the country but 20% worldwide globally of all bikes being sold now on average are electric mountain bikes electric bikes sorry um but what’s quite surprising

About this is in Academia at least we still seem to know very little about um people’s reasons for for buying e- mountain bikes or perhaps most pressingly in this context how these Technologies might um impact cultures of off-road cycling and all the things that that go with

That um work by people such as Leslie Ingram Sills um who uh had a chapter in my recent edited book on mountain biking has uh sought to address this and look at this and address this fill this Gap if you like in the literature but it’s

Safe to say that that progress in this area is is um is frustratingly slow now for me as someone who’s interested and passionate about mountain biking and thinks that electric mountain bikes in particular can have something to add to this these debates I find this really

Frustrating um because on the one hand e mountain bikes have been identified as a tool that can actually help facilitate people’s exercise in green spaces who might in some cases not otherwise be there the other I guess pressing political or cultural issue is is that um the presence of an artificial

Object uh in a supposedly natural space raises all sorts of questions in these outdoor environments about um you know who should be there what kinds of bodies should should be allow and disallow in outdoor spaces which kind of bodies and people and communities are marginalized from these

Spaces um and in relation to disability there are really specific questions here to ask around what we mean by disablement and assistance within green exercise and how this might relate to certain ideological Notions around nature risk adventure and all those other things that tend to go with hand inand with green

Spaces so as a way of addressing this um I spoke to 30 physically and mentally impaired e mountain bike users I had I conducted interviews with them we had hourlong conversations about this um all of whom were in England and together collectively we tried to make sense of some of the

Tensions that exist between e- mountain bike users and other users of the countryside um as well as some of the implications that such relations might have in uh in terms of encouraging alternative conceptualizations of what it means to be disabled um to do this and this is where

The Theory comes in that I want to touch on today briefly we we decided to put um disability in green exercise in conversation with the work of someone called burner stegler because we felt that burnner steger’s work helped us to highlight the superficiality of existing ideologies of nature whilst at the same time

Understanding the Myriad ways that e- mountain bites can challenge these ableist assumptions towards outdoor recreation okay so just some quick notes then on on the theoretical underpinnings of the study um we tend to find in existing studies on disability and green exercise which is is generally excellent by the way I’d

Recommend recommend it if if you get a few hours and you’re interested in immersing yourself in in that literature um it’s really common for people to examine the ways in which disabled exercises are understandably marginalized in green green spaces so um in these context disabled access to Green exercise is positioned

In one of two ways um the first is that we talk about the way in which the the um there’s a blatant regard for things like the grotesque um dysfunctional body that uh is seen as deviant in these outdoor spaces and then on the other hand you have a

Disregard um for uh which kind of um reinforces the ways in which certain bodies are overlooked within green spaces and not really given a chance to thrive so if we if we uh think about this we can think about it in the same way as we might look at um uh certain

Interv other interventions in nature so um despite um generally nature being intervened by humans all the time we have things like cafes Styles foot paths that that Aid kind of both able and disabled bodies it’s often only those forms of intervention in natural space that relates specifically to disabled

Access um things such as handrails chairlifts accessible toilets and the like that tend to be uh seen as unacceptably contrived and what this is is this is the disabled body being disregarded on the other hand you’ve got an explicit regard for disabl body B bodies which is evident in um things

Like the attitudes and expectations of of land managers uh and other other recreational users of these outdoor spaces so for example in a paper that I right recently on e- mountain bikes outside of the context of disability we found that it was common for e- mountain bikes to to comment on

Things like like really small but subtle and in some cases unremarkable um interactions that they were having with other users of the countryside things like tutting uh eye rolling all of which tend to reinforce that these bodies these Technologies are othered that they don’t belong in those environments

And when we take these things together so the regard and the disregard these various forms of inclusion um constitute a systematic process of Social and cultural stigmatization which in the long term and over a long period of time can lead to feelings of especially when it comes to disabled users feelings of

Helplessness exclusion and and overall a reluctance to Harry on exercising in those spaces but and this is the big but for for for James and I important uh critical I guess though these these factors are in understanding how disabled exercise might be excluded from from Green spaces the problem for us is

That they’re overly negative they suggest that um the the only experiences that disabled or impaired users of these spaces might have is uh one where you know they’re they’re they’re kind of abused or they get upset they might be anxious they lack agency they lack any imagination

And they only encounter nature in a negative way as a result of that Focus important though that is we tend to lose sight of the many ways in which nature nature encounters have been proven by the likes of Sarah Bell who have reference on the slide there in a way that promotes

Feelings of Freedom um often from from ableist attitudes towards the outdoors and those pressures of perfectionism that we all experience when we when we enter into these spaces and what we ignore therefore is in the same way is that you know just like able-bodied exercises in green spaces

There are also moments for for disabled exercises of um curiosity and uh exploration and adventure and upskilling all those things that able-bodied and non non-a bodied participants might have in common and that was really where we choose chose to emphasize um the role of the electronic mountain

Bike so for us this is where uh Bernard steger’s approach to technology comes in so I’ll try and keep this um as unfl flowery and and as uncomplex as possible for those of you that might not be sociologists or philosophers because I appreciate this is quite heavy stuff but

Overall steeger steger’s life work really he he passed recently so he’s not with us anymore but st’s life work was about um uh looking and trying to explain how technology isn’t just a tool but it’s actually a form of mediation that profoundly influences our sense of humanity our perceptions our

Interactions and all the possibilities that we have as human beings they’re all mediated by technology so he was trying to move away from this idea that technology is just an object or an implement but it actually he was suggesting fundamentally influences and mediates everything we are and everything we do as human beings

So in this sense steer actually goes as far in his writing to suggest that What Makes Us unique as human beings isn’t our necessarily our genetic composition our biological composition our cerebral capacities as humans which is the one thing that is always talked about in differentiating from animals but actually that we’re all

Defined by nothingness we’re all defying by lack and for stegler it’s actually technology that that that supplements that lack that allows us to feel human um and what’s great about that in relation to disability is it is that it suggests that um we all have a shared dependence on technology and by

Extension are th all equally vulnerable to the consequences of its use for better and for worse so when applied to things like disability we can see here that rather than Technologies such as wheelchairs e- mountain bikes tents being universally good or bad it’s actually the social milar the social relationships that we

Have with those things and that go around it um that influence how we interpret and position them and so when we look at this in the context of e- mountain biking um which I I think is quite useful we can see this the pro the problem with e mountain bikes and

They’re often deemed to be a problem as we know is not in the technology in the object of the bike itself but it’s actually in the the fact that forms of care and attention that we used to dedicate to ensuring Technologies such as this were responsibly and ethically

Used are unfortunately being hijacked by um the kind of constant simulation and distraction that comes with things like computers smartphones social networking sites and so on and so forth and what these things have done to our relationship with technology is that it’s resulted in a shall shallower mode of

Engagement um W with the world and with others and a diminish diminished capacity for critical thinking and reflection so this is this is where things get quite exciting for me with steger’s work because he he calls for a reevaluation and uh more attention dedicated to the practices that that

That are that surround technological use and to try and reimagine ways in which we can cultivate focused deep engagement with those um various technological uses and implements and in the context of the present study we’d argue that um disabled e- mountain bike users are actually really well placed to to usher

In this new world of reflection and focused engagement both because they tend to be the victims more often than not because of the bikes they’re riding of stigma and abuse so it’s really close to them quite raw um but also because um these writers tend to be really critical about

Some of those opinions and tend to in my experience of interviewing them reimagine relationships with technology that can in some cases lead to more diverse and creative ways of using these Technologies overall then when it comes to disability what I really like about ste’s work and how it applies to e

Mountain bikes is that it helps us to reject and reimagine some of often binary opposites between things like disablement and able-bodiedness what is healthy and unhealthy what is Normal and abnormal and it allows us to celebrate rather than denigrate that inter meshing of technology which in this case is e-

Mountain bikes nature which is important stegler wrote on this as well and the disabled body okay so that’s the theory um that that’s that’s they’re the ideas that that we found useful in in kind of um prefacing um some of our findings I’ll just um spend the last part of my

Presentation just going through some of the the the things that came out of the interviews and how we um how what we concluded from what people were saying um the first thing that we noticed from from a lot of these responses um from these interviews these 30 interviews

With um disabled impaired users of the countryside on E mountain bikes was that um they were clearly being subject to these forms of regard that I highlighted earlier on um and what was really insightful here was that this regard was could be further subcategorized into two different

Categories the first um was um in relation to the Public’s perception that the use of their bikes which you know this will be second nature to a lot of you on the call who who kind kind of of with these debates but the first thing they got accused of regularly was

Cheating and as is common and fortunately this often resulted in uh verbal abuse from other users of green space that was directed deliberately at these disabled e mountain bikers so two quotes here for example that illustrate this Julie says that it was sunny so everybody was sitting outside in the

Cafe and I was going past and this bloke just shouted that I was a cheat um Kelly um similarly says I went to X Woods once which is a location that I’ve anonymized I was riding past a group of kids and they all shout cheat cheat cheat I thought they don’t have a

Clue wait till you’re 42 and you’ve got arthritis so that was kind of that regard that explicit regard that people were receiving which was very overt very obvious but the second thing um that also meant they were being regarded was um this idea that ebikes were in some way lazier

Than those who didn’t people who didn’t use a motor so um one of the participants for example said that his mates told him that he’s a lazy old man who doesn’t want to pedal anymore someone else said that their friends um regard them as being a bit soft they

Feel a bit soft and I think I think they’d feel a bit soft my friends if they had an ebike now what what’s interesting here about how this relates to this kind of relates to dominant tropes in existing literature on disability studies um the first is they illustrate how the

Disabled body is neg negatively stereotyped um as being less capable less intelligent less productive and kind of perpetuating that belief that they are in some way deficient compared to non-disabled users um and the other thing that came from this is that it kind of provides evidence for that idea that the disabled

Body is commonly positioned as passive or weak or necessarily relies on assistance from other objects and people rather than being active objects or act active agents in um their own meaning making their own lives one further thing that I haven’t mentioned on the slide here that that

Has just kind of drugged my memory is that the amount of people abuse disabled users received was directly proportional to how visible their disability was so one one of the interviewees told me a really interesting story where he was saying that he has problems with the use

Of his legs but you wouldn’t necessarily know he had um someone called him a cheat he got off his bike and kind of hobbled towards this other user of the countryside and after that the guy who had called him a cheat very quickly realized that he had a disability and

Therefore immediately started to apologize where participants had really visual disabilities like for example when people had um Ms which was a couple of my participants had Ms and it was really visually obvious that was the case they received less abuse because they were seeing as being more dependent

On that form of technology for their Leisure so I just find that fascinating in terms of how disability may or may not be stigmatized okay on a slightly cheerier note uh um which was great to see participants also talked about certain affordances that were provided by the electronic electronic mountain bike so

Uh participants talked about how the motor became a physical extension of of their body and that in many cases this allowed them to lessen or in some cases overcome the perceived effects of their impairment uh so Hannah um who I’ve not listed on the slide here but Hannah

Hannah talks about how there’s two types of oh sorry yeah Hannah is represented in this this quote at the top Hannah suggests there are two types of people um that she would break um three types of people excuse me that she would break the the the beneficiaries of of e- by

Technology down to when she says um there are people who’ have lost limbs or whose Fitness has been massively impacted by an incident that’s the first one there’s a large group of people whose Fitness isn’t where they want it to be and then there’s older people for

Example our friends who are in the 60s who have just bought ebikes because their knees are pretty much shot across all three of these groups individuals felt much much less limited by certain long-term um health conditions so we had people with asthma heart disease MS multiple sclerosis as I

Mentioned spinal cord injuries was a common one uh knee osteoarthritis uh and obesity was another one and for for many of these people psychologically this was said to provide a real morale boost that allow them to get out and do the things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do now what I’ve always advocated and

This is no different in this case but what I’ve always advocated is to kind of whil understanding the significance of those physical benefits is also bearing in mind a lot of the time that social benefits follow from this as well and in this study this was this was absolutely

No different so someone like Darren for example one of my other participants um was talking about the modes on the bike and and the choice that he gets and and these kind of sentiments were expressed by lots of other participants as well this ability to um choose between how how much

Assistance you get uh turning the boost mode on when you gets tired uh Becky who was sufferer of Ms saying that she enjoyed being able to uh ride up the UPS as well as go down the downs and then there’s people as well who talked about riding increasingly technical stuff where they might

Otherwise not be able to with another bike and what was what I loved about this was the knock on effect of this ability to choose was it had a direct impact on their social lives so another participant for example says um in my experience of riding e mountain bikes it

Can be a bit of an equalizer in my riding group there’s one guy who’s actually quite fit but he’s got some medical problems so he’s a bit anemic and struggles a bit although he was actually doing very well yesterday on his bike the other lad is getting on a

Bit and he’s probably heavier than he should be and he’s not that fit so he can really struggle but having an e mountain bike allowed us to ride together and have a laugh without worrying about how fit we were or how much we were suffering with our knees or our lungs or whatever

I guess in this sense perhaps the most powerful affordance that I think you might associate with an e- mountain bike is that ability to delegate the physical output of the E mountain bike motor um which in by extension allows participants to focus on the social aspect of riding rather than just being

Obsessed with their breathing or how tired their legs are uh and and therefore shift their experience of riding a bike away from their perceived um physical inadequacies okay so just one final thing then I think this is for me the most um heartwarming and promising aspect of people’s relationship with the

Mountain bikes um and this was in the way that they a lot of people felt like their ountain bike made them feel super human now of course if you read the literature around this IND disability studies around things like the term superhuman this is a term that’s widely problematized

Um for it suggestion that you know all disabled people the only way they can overcome disability is by in some way by being in some way superum rather than just kind of normal or or human um and there is a risk here that we might kind of normalize this

Participants might normalize this in the context of you know Rehabilitation and just wanting to get better and using the mountain bike as a way of getting better or becoming more normal but going back to what I said about regard when participants have been subject to this intense level of regard through

Verbal or in some cases physical abuse by members of the public the benefit of that is they became really suspicious of the demarcation of Nature and technology so uh to give an example Jenny talked about a confrontation she had with the user of the outdoors and she was kind of pointing out that

Despite people having a go for using an artificial object in a supposedly natural space you look around you especially in the PE district and you’ve got dams tractors uh things like golf courses other parts of the world you’ve got ski lifts artificial White Water raffling facilities but none of these things or

Rarely of these things actually ever positioned as being unnatural but as I said before these things tend to to Garner much less attention than e mountain bikes and and this the participants were conscious of this so what they did was they started shifting emphasis onto uh which reflects

The work of Papa demitro as listed on the slide there who talks about becoming unwelded how how people actually via in his case he’s talking about wheelchairs but this could equally transfer onto mountain bikes um how people through a process of of embodiment or re-embodiment use an

Ebike and make it part of their embodied existence so um throughout the interviews for example participants talked about uh how their bodies and their bikes were kind of worked together to facilitate new ways of of moving through these natural Recreation spaces so one of my participants Rob gave a really succinct indic indication

Of how this might be manifest in riding any mountain bike when he says it’s quite interesting compared to how you use your own physiology it’s kind of like an energy Supply if you like it’s an energy Supply that you can use up but once it’s started it gets depleted so

You have to ride more occas so that the battery doesn’t die and there are numerous responses um whose uh you know respon didn’t make it onto the slide here said very similar things um but all of them were talking about how their experience of that meshing of bike and body became Central

To the the experience of riding a trail or riding any any mountain bike trail so in line with broader kind of uh for those of you in the room who might be in any way philosophically or sociologically inclined you might know that there’s a big movement now towards

Kind of what’s being described as posthuman or new materialist disability studies what this illustrates for me and for us is that there’s these mechanical assemblages that are formed between human and technology and these assemblages or or if you’re not this way inclined just think of them as collections of objects and behaviors can

Actually push disabled riders to go beyond modern understandings of what constitutes properly or acceptably human or technical behaviors and in the process actually helps us to challenge what we mean by this very notion of disability so overall I guess I’d say despite that the stick that electric

Mountain bikers might get um on trails in natural environments it turns out that actually these Technologies can be incredibly immersive they can be empowering and perhaps most importantly they can be quite politically transgressive for um impaired users of the outdoors which I think is great right so just to wrap up then so

Um Technologies technology it’s not going away it’s always it’s it’s always has been a part of the outdoors and green spaces and it would seem um that it’s probably always going to be maybe increasingly so so we we can’t avoid that and one of the things that Bern

Steeger encourages to do is to not stray away from that but take responsibility for that and start to figure out how we might think about these new technological and human assemblages or collections of behavior what I hope to what we hope to have done in this study is by exploring

Elect electronic mountain bike use we can see how it’s subject to many of those negative ableist attitudes that we get about access to um natural spaces and you know disabled people for for for kind of decades now have been subject to to kind of ideological forms of movement

And certain um ways of thinking and acting in these green spaces so the E the mountain bite can help us to challenge that which is great um specifically I think we’ve highlighted here that that it’s subject to a form of regard which actively highlights the problematic nature of disabled bodies

But almost problem as problematic as the sense of disregard when bodies are ignored or not given the attention that maybe they deserve um both in the literature and in people’s experience of green spaces but what e- mountain bikes ultimately and positively allow people to do is they allow people to transgress

Some of these stereotypes and form new identities new ways of acting and thinking and feeling in green spaces which are altogether much more empowering than the ones that might have preceded it and so overall I’d say if there was one contribution that I think our study can make it’s

About uh understanding in the of critical disability studies in green exercise how socio Technical and social natural indeterminacy or or kind of confusion about what bodies are and where they should be can actually in many cases serve to challenge the forms of Oppression that disabled people might

Face whilst at the same time promoting more diverse and creative and I guess imaginative versions of what it might mean to exercise in in lived environments okay that’s me thank you very much um Che Liam um what we’ll do guys if it’s okay by you is we’ll we’ll have

The two presentations and then we’ll have a nice long discussion afterwards um if you’ve if you joined us a bit later or or maybe Midway through my presentation I think there were two people who did that and just bear in mind please you can well first of all

This this Zoom call is being recorded so that’s the first thing to say the second thing is that if you’ve got any questions uh and don’t necessar want to air those in public feel free to just pop them on the chat and we’ll come to them when we come to the discussion at

The end uh okay without further Ado I shall pass on to Liam who’s going to talk about Trail building and ecologies of practice uh all I will see about Liam is he’s uh Lector and researcher at Sheffield University just over the road from me um Liam’s also got a book a

Chapter in in my book on uh the cultures of mountain biking and he’s going to talk to us today yeah about ecologies of Trail building cheers Liam cool thanks Jim that was brilliant I really enjoyed that so many questions can you see that okay yes cool right yeah just um give me a

A head shake or a finger wag if I’m going over too much I’m rambling on so uh yeah thanks very much for for inviting me um my name is Liam I’m based at the architecture school in Sheffield um and I’ve been doing I’ve been doing research for a few years on I

Mean I am a a bike rider and have been for uh God knows how long 20 25 years probably um and also a trail Builder and and I’ve kind of in the last couple of years sort of turned my academic attention to that as well um so yeah as

Jim said I’ve written a chapter in the book and um I’ve written some work on sort of Maintenance and care of Trails um and especially kind of DIY trails and and sort of uh wild Trails I suppose people often call them or pirate Trails is the most recent term that I’ve come across

Uh and I’ve I’ve sort of put together this presentation really this really half-baked ideas um partly because I was hoping that this could be a space to sort of test something out and um get some kind of feedback and ideas from everybody else uh so yeah slightly

Selfish as well uh so yeah really intrigued to kind of hear any thoughts on on what I’m saying um I recognize that there’s a lot that I’m not saying in this and uh so I think it’ll be interesting to to kind of pick up on that perhaps um and I

Suppose just to as a very kind of brief introduction like kind of rationale for looking at looking at Trails through this kind of notion of an Ecology of practice is there sort of fragility um so in the book i s in in Jim’s book I sort of talk about how

Trails are sort of fragile all the way down they’re sort of um fragile in terms of how they’re held together they’re fragile in terms of how um they often have to remain secret they’re fragile in terms of the kind of weather that you can see like in this image that sort of

Starts to destroy them and break them apart um and so I kind of I wanted to use this or or kind of think with this notion of of an Ecology of practice um which uh I’ll kind of introduce shortly um or certainly kind of how I have come to understand it um

So sort of again unapologetically or or perhaps apologetically um following on from Jim there’s quite a lot of heavy theory in this partly because I know that Jim likes to talk theory so uh I thought it would be nice to sort of um yeah kind of try and weave that through through the

Mud and through the trails if you like um so I’m taking this concept of of an Ecology of practice from uh a philosopher and um originally a trained chemist uh Isabelle Sanger so she’s a kind of philosopher of science um so slightly kind of unlikely reference perhaps for looking at Trail building um

But I think that she provides some really interesting Concepts and ways of thinking about uh practices kind of generally um but normally sort of scientific practices that uh I you know I think can be taken up in lots of different sort of fields and so I’m sort

Of testing out whether whether this can work in looking at Trail building um as a kind of side note she also provides this notion of uh in catastrophic times that um inspired Jim’s edited collection was that from last year Jim or the year before yeah um

So so yeah I’ll just quickly read out this quote um so Isabel Stingers demands of us that no practice be defined as like any other just as no living species is like any other approaching a practice then means approaching it as it diverges that is feeling its borders experimenting with the questions which

Practitioners May accept as relevant so for me you know as she says it’s all about looking at the the specifics of a given practice so so what is it what is the specifics of DIY Trail building um that are that are different to any other kind of practice or any any

Other kind of Trail building practice even um or other DIY practice for that matter so it’s about this kind of resistance to sameness um and saying look there’s this this practice or this this process that’s going on it’s just like this one um so kind of resisting that

Urge um so she kind of she talks about anology of practice as a tool for thinking through what is happening um and kind of reminds us that a tool is never neutral right it’s um it’s it’s very kind of specific and becomes quite situated um it’s not up here but she in

In in in this chapter introductory notes on an Ecology of practice she goes on to say that that the relevant tools the tools for thinking are the ones that address and actualize the power of the situation that make it a matter of particular concerns in other words make

Us think and not recognize right so I again I take this reading to be around um using tools for thinking as opposed to um trying to equivocate or kind of look for similarities in things so kind of in that vein it’s important to say that um what I intend to do is

Look at the sort of specifics of DIY Trail building and not others um so this is why why I introduced and said there’s lots missing here right this is for me this is like very specific and very situated um and it’s not so that the things that I’m describing can

Be kind of lifted and applied elsewhere um but so that we can kind of take them seriously and and sort of use this this this tool of an Ecology of practice to work out what we might learn from them um but I would say it’s very important

That it’s not I don’t think these should be sort of thought as methods it’s not so that we can kind of look at this thing borrow it and apply it somewhere else but to sort of think through the very specifics of them um and and to do that sangus

Provides these two kind of uh tools if you like um this notion of obligations and requirements of specific practices that I’m going to that I’m going to come back to later and to do that and to try and get there I’m going to tell three uh three very quick stories from my experience

Trail building um and each one of these will speak to to a kind of theme so the first will be prototyping the second apprenticeships and the third obligations and requirements I realize I’m sort of talking really in the abstract here so I’m going to try and um situate

It in the mud um so first up prototyping um as a sort of designer and someone that’s been educated in design this is something that’s quite kind of um is is like a large interest of my work um and I think that Trails provide quite an interesting and novel form of

Prototyping so I’ll just tell the first very quick story and these are kind of lifted from kind of unedited field notes um that I’ve kept over the last few years so I come back to the dig this week and what we jokingly called the burm inspection unit has been in and

Moved the corner I built last week they’ve moved it back by a few feet I protest that it was better where I had stacked it but eventually relent that it probably does line you up better for the next jump now obviously no one knows it’s all about it’s it’s all trying to

Feel it out in your head and it’s interesting to navigate the delay between building and testing there’s a temporality to the prototyping process a kind of seasonal rotation so we need to wait until the trail is dried up to figure out if it will work and then

After that we’ll argue over how to make it work and start over again the next job is to build out the flat bottom between the BM and the last jump on the track after the flat bottom we need to pull out a stump and stack up

A takeoff this one’s a big one and we joke around who is going to be the guinea pig for it we agree not to build it with rocks because the jump will most likely have to be moved once it’s been tested it’s a lot easier to move a takeoff than a

Landing so at this point the trail is still really provisional right it’s like it’s a prototype that’s going to emerg throughout the season um we kind of trying to play it out in our heads kind of using previous experience like is this going to work is this going to line

Up uh there’s obviously lots of debates and arguments between different build ERS and people who know better or worse but I think when we kind of contrast this with um more conventional or kind of uh organized Trail building there’s a very different sort of materiality and kind of practice

That’s going on so in this kind of in this image here there’s a real kind of degree of permanence um these these things Can’t Be Moved easily um they require like training they require certain people to come in they require lots of material they require

Lots of money um and in in the same way as the kind of rocks in the takeoff that I sort of alluded to in the field note um it’s kind of done once it’s done and it’s all about um kind of pre-planning and then getting the track built so I

Think there’s something really interesting here around the um the sort of process of DIY Trail building where it’s always emerging always kind of in this state of becoming if you like it’s never fixed never finished um which is kind of reflected in both the materiality and and the tools that that

Are used to build it so for example the wacka plate um you know is this very sort of official tool that seems to sort of signify the end of the trail build it’s like the last process that runs through the trail um yeah and it’s very different to you

Know um stamping something in with your feet or kind of kicking a line down a down a woodland um for you to sort of play on and there’s so there’s there’s a lot of uh literature around prototyping in in design um and and in sociology um I don’t really have that

Much time to go through it here um but I guess that its most basic prototyping is this kind of pro provisional arrangement of things that are used to sort of test something out um so this is a quote from sociologist Michael gugenheim who describes prototyping he says it’s

Always existed and probably for most of human history has been more important than its opposite orderly science and planning so he’s kind of talking about how um in in human history it’s there the question of what gets built is very rarely kind of planned out in advance

Often it’s kind of cobbled together is kind of bricked um and gener and kind of emerges over time in different sort of generations um so most you know most of the time prototyping is thought of as this as this kind of iteration and these testing um that can then be tested again

And then kind of results in a new prototype and back and forth um but there’s still sort of speculative in nature right they require a little bit of guesswork at the beginning you kind of jump into the unknown to begin with but normally it’s towards some kind of

Fixed outcome or kind of final product is the sort of classic thing in product design but then more recently there’s this been this this kind of notion of of cosmopolitical prototyping so um this is again kind of a bit of an Isabel Sanger Fanboy uh so this is kind of informed by

Isabelle Stinger’s notion of cosmopolitics um I’m just going to give you this this quote here from uh Rubio and fog who have described K cosmopolitical prototyping quite neatly I think they say it’s a process that is not focused on the capacity of design to prescribe codes into action and thought

But on its capacity to propose and open up the possibility of new forms of action and thought what we call the unfolding capacities of design and so I think this this like quite neatly um starts to describe what what trail building could be right and I don’t think I’ve quite

Worked out what this means for for trail building but I think there’s something quite exciting about this possibility where the construction or the kind of um provisional arrangement of a trail begins to open up the possibility of new action and thought right or new kinds of relationships between humans non-humans

Environments Technologies bikes and so on um so I’d really love to hear what you know if this kind of ch of people like what what does this kind of notion of cosmopolitical prototyping do in relation to bike riding and Trail building I’m realizing that I’m uh going

Over time a little bit so I’m going to speed up um getting a nod there from Jim uh so the second sort of story relates to this notion of apprenticeships um so again I’m just going to read very briefly from from kind of field notes um over the next couple of

Slides so a few younger boys joined for tonight’s dig and are quickly put to work on a mat to start hacking out an old burm Charlie notices that one of them is using the mattic incorrectly bending over it without moving the hands and not using the weight of the pick

Over the heads with a straight back he spends a bit of time explaining and demonstrating how to use it explaining how you can get most out of the we to the pick like the old expression my dad used to say let the tool do the work and how to avoid

Damaging your back it seems like a bit of a given that anyone could use a pick but of course we’ve all been doing this for 20 or more years and take for granted that you have to learn somewhere the older diggers are generally pretty generous they don’t make any fun and

Take out take take time out to explain how to use it it also means now that the youngster making much shorter work of the burn I’ve talked to Charlie about this before when I suggested that we could pay a contractor to help with surfacing parts of the track

But he makes a really strong argument that we need to invest in the youngsters to get them excited about digging because this is what will keep the spot going if they if they just showed up to a finished TX spot Charlie feels they won’t appreciate it it won’t feel like

It’s theirs I somewhat agree obviously there’s a balance it needs to seem achievable at the same time as inviting agency many of my friends Through The Years quit riding because of the work it took to main train maintain Trails so I think there’s there’s got to be some Middle Ground

So to kind of think through this example um I’ve become interested in the um some writing from the Anthropologist uh probably going to pronounce this name wrongly um John LA and the educational theorist etan Wenger and they have this concept of legitimate peripheral participation um and I think this is

This is a really useful concept because it it describes the ways that newcomers interact with old time and become um what they what they call a community of practice um and the the lav and wer focus on a quite a broad understanding of of apprenticeships um as this sort of process of situated

Learning that’s not just limited to workplaces um they actually say they want to kind of uh rescue apprenti ships from this um from only being associated with that um and so I think this becomes really interesting to Think Through what a kind of DIY apprenticeship is and how that kind of

Might be done um so with this in mind in in trail building there’s this kind of sort of process of learning that I guess starts with a a kind of bodily engagement with bike riding like learning to ride a bike skillfully as a kind of user like a user of that

Space But then that person’s intentions become kind of configured through in the process of becoming a sort of full participant right by actually participating in that spot’s um sociocultural practices and and forming that spot you know so you know you can so there’s this kind of shift

From what starts out as a user the by becoming engaged in the repair and maintenance of those of those places and and by shadowing the the kind of Old-Timers um they sort of become a fully-fledged member right and this this happens through quite basic tasks Like You Begin by filling wheelbarrows with

Dirt or by hacking out the burm or by raking leaves and then you kind of graduate to a shaper so there’s this kind of quite strict hierarchy like you become responsible for the design of the trail you kind of you can have your opinions heard and this sort of final

Shaping of the of the features and I think there’s something interesting here as well where those are really um they’re quite highly thought over and and guarded right there’s a lot of kind of informal negotiation and debate fighting even um and they’re kind of quite specific again to a to a given

Spot or a different or a given kind of spot okay how am I doing for time I still got a few minutes so onto the kind of last the last kind of section I suppose um and I’m going to return to Stingers again and and kind of think with her notion of

Obligations and requirements um and I’m kind of aware that I’m probably stretching her Concepts a little bit too far um but I think that within her yeah I’m not trying to sort of compare um Trail building and the sort of scientific practices that she’s kind

Of thinking through um but I want to but I really kind of appreciate that she she kind of invites this idea of a tool for thinking um so so without going into too much detail around how she defines this notion of an obligation and a requirement

Um I think there’s there there’s a tool for thinking what an obligation and requirement of a DIY Trail is right and how that might be different to official Trail building um and and there’s something there that kind of matters and I think that I want to try and pay attention

To so I think the first thing that um that’s that’s perhaps quite obvious is that um and this is a quote that a friend said to me recently he said I want a track that scares me um so the kind of obligation of of a of a trail is

Is to scare and to excite um and it kind of made me realize that uh I mean some of the trails that I build I I’ll probably never hit because I’m too scared um I don’t know if I’ll ever actually go on them and so but I but I think there’s

Something really interesting there around how there’s this kind of quest for um and I I’m going to quote um it’s someone who I quote in in the book chapter actually um one of the very early sort of Scholars of uh sort of Lifestyle Sports is Nancy madal and she

Had this this notion of a a kind of quest for a moment of ecstasy um and I think that there’s this is what is really kind of driving these DIY trails and it it also points this quite thorny issue that tracks shouldn’t necessarily be sanitized they need to have this

Very um or this is the opinion of of of Trail builders that they they need to have this quite carefully balanced and also uh relative sort of sketchiness this kind of feeling of slight Terror and also this kind of the possibility of progress and of learning

Right to get through another Trail or to get through something that’s harder and and I think to kind of go back to my very first point this is this is to do with their fragility this is why they also may need to sort of stay in the shadows and remain quite secret

Right because those two are kind of incompatible like for something to be scary um as its kind of defining feature um I’m just going to slightly thicken this I’m going to return to the kind of ma story um that I started telling so uh while Charlie was demonstrating the ma I

Started to think think about health and safety here we are shoveling cutting packing without any of the training that you might get on an official dig day of course no one’s fed in a risk assessment and I think about my University’s risk aversion ethics committees I’m glad

They’re not here where would I even start on the form anyway putting your back out from using a shovel incorrectly kind of seems insignificant when you think about the risk associated with the jumps we’re building so in this in this story there’s still this kind of obligation towards safety but it’s kind of

Inflected with risk there’s kind of risk running through that um there’s this kind of uh outward kind of care towards the diggers that really runs through everything that’s happening here you know you’d walk your friend off the hill if they’d hurt themselves but there’s still this kind of General encouragement

Of the possibilities for pain and injury um that that has to always run through this like that’s the thing that kind of um underpins this practice and that motivates this practice um and again so again not to kind of try and stretch Stinger’s definitions too far um but this quote that obligation

Refers to the fact that a practice imposes on upon its participants certain risks and challenges that create the value of their activity that really kind of chimed with me right um so it is this kind of um this risk that that produces the value or that that kind of that becomes

The intrinsic value of of what we’re doing here and and the other kind of half of that um it to to go back to stus is is requirement um and so she talks about requirement as reflecting the normative and risky dimension of dependence on a

Mure um that is on on what may or may not fulfill needs and demands right so this kind of um dependence on its it’s it sort of surroundings and it its settings right um and so so I think this notion of needs and demands is really interesting

Like on on the surface the demands of you know just to to see it um on a surface level DIY ters don’t really have any demands they’re not really kind of legible but perhaps they begin to sort of underscore a way of being and practicing especially when we sort of

Think about um quote unquote lifestyle Sports and I think that the final I really love um these memes from Blood Sweat and builds maybe some some of you have seen them um the final kind of aspect relating to these is is the process of building itself

Um this is a a kind of meme page that’s set up just I don’t think I’ve ever seen a a bike on on this meme page it’s all about building DIY Trails um and and I think it’s you know so another one of these another kind of requirement if you like is

That this is not just about riding this is about the process of building um there’s another kind of moment of ecstasy you know to to take Nancy midal’s um quote again which is to to be quotequote in the pit to be digging to be maintaining to be kind of um out being

Excited with a group of friends and I think perhaps more importantly or interestingly is the imagination of what the trail will feel like the kind of stoke that comes with that imagination the kind of risk associated with it working or not and so this the not the kind of requirement there is entirely

Speculative and imaginative it kind of exists in the in the Builder’s minds and it’s to do with with the kind of future the future you right the kind of future sessions With Friends the future um Good Times in the summer uh so there’s something there that that I find really really interesting and

Exciting um so just yeah just a very briefly kind of recap I guess it’s important for me to say that I’m not I’m definitely not arguing against safely built official trails in fact I’m not taking a position here um but I think the fact is that there will always be DIY

Tracks uh and I think there’s a bunch of problematic stuff associated with them that I haven’t talked about here I have talked about in the past in fact I’ve talked about in the book chapter like you know these practice and communities tend to be Super Macho often quite homophobic um very

White this is kind of changed in the last you know in very recent years um but I think there’s still a lot of work to be done um but I think given you know despite in spite of all of that I think there’s still a lot

To be learned from DIY and and I think it so it’ be interesting to kind of hear from um perhaps those that are that are more engaged in official Trail building around sort of what what the kind of discourse could be around this um what

Can we kind of learn from each other I suppose I think that’s it and I think they’re too far over time I think you kept the time a lot better than I did Liam in the end so was ironic given that I warned you at

The start not to go over time and then and it was ended up being my fault so the apologies are all mine um no worries gram Gram’s got a question do you want to pop your mic on Graham and ask it yes if comp if the computer does the

Work can you hear me now yes yeah cool um I mean be fair I could Pro talk to both of you for hours on both of these things as Jim would attested to um what what’s been really interesting about both these for me is that in terms of

The sort of the my experience out there you are you’re providing me in my work life with the evidence that it isn’t just me anecdotally going this is the kind of stuff I think is happening um which is really good and it helps me have a better conversations that it

Isn’t just the grumpy old bloke in the corner saying yeah but you’re wrong this is what I think the um you know on the the stuff that you put forward there Jim is really interesting having done a lot of work with people like experienced community and disabled riders and stuff

It’s a it’s you know so last year as an example we did we did took part in the dirty re and they were and there were a lot of our you know Raffa clad Graal gravels cycling past the guys on hand and girls on hand cycles and things going that’s

Amazing that’s Brent you’re doing so well but they also cycle past a pair of ladies who basically kept up with us the whole way around who are probably suffering far more than you know we were and they didn’t pay any attention to them if anything they were they did

Those kind of sideways glances and it was a real that image and that perception of what this things and if they’ been on ebikes it would have just it would have been really miserable to be part of you know there is there there’s such a um a culture um around

That the ebike and what that actually means to the person on it that it would be amazing if we could change that and that sort of you judgment that happens with all those things um and and and again and you know the stuff that Liam was talking about there

It’s really interesting as a again a sort of land owner kind of it’s really interesting in in in some respects so is it worth just pointing out what you do for a living okay so no no it’s fine I work for the National Trust um I try and help

Places engage better with people with wheels I think it’s the simplest way ofing looking at it um and so things like Trail building stuff is a really fascinating one if if in appropriate places in some respects if the stuff is built so it’s technically hard to ride and you hurt

Yourself you know that’s okay you know within obviously reason but if the stuff isn’t built properly or the people who are building it hurt themselves or by the stuff they do they hurt other people actually it’s more challenging for us as land owners as well to manage that which

Is sometimes um more of a challenging conversation to have with people it’s not we don’t want them to you know to to engage with those spaces this whole engagement with nature and and have people to choose to do that is is um something we talk about a lot you know a

Person digging some jumps in the wood is engaging it they’re just not going out and hugging trees for example two kind of extremes there but yeah it’s a really fascinating one you know you talk about the you know the diggers thinking about their health and safety but actually

It’s it gets complicated then because they you know you know if some if Joe blogs does his back in that’s one thing but actually but they’re happy then for a person to I suppose consciously decide to try things that are hard and therefore could hurt themselves um yeah

All of this stuff is really interesting like I say it’s it’s so it makes my life easier when I talk to other people that it isn’t just me saying this is kind of the stuff I think there’s kind of some academic rigor behind some of these

Things and um um yes so just yeah keep going it makes my life better go that’s for sure I was just gonna say I think that that’s where I’m really excited about that notion of apprenticeships um where you know there’s a because it’s such a young

Sport that you’ve got this kind of group of kind of I know I look quite young but I’m quite old people who can um who will kind of bring up the youngsters and can say well look if you’re going to build that jump in the woods then you need to make sure that

The exit is safe you need to make sure that you’ve got a kind of qualifier at the beginning you know you need to make sure there’s lines of sight so that you can that it is s you know as safe as it can be and and like I said there’s

Always going to be this kind of inflection of risk running through all of this stuff like that’s not that will never go away that’s just how humans are isn’t it um yeah but if if we can kind of really work on that and I think if we can also

Um you know bring in those other older Builders and and get them to appreciate what it is they can do for these for other people for different spots for you know for your The National Trust land even right it’s um I think there’s something really exciting there for me

That I’m really interested in definitely and you know I visited loads of sites within the trust and they all come with their own little you know foibles and designations and stuff but actually you know one bit of dirt over there actually to work with that and make something

That is sustainable you know but well built rise could be completely different in terms of that build to to you know a mile down the road just because of the nature of the the terrain the tree covering all that sort of stuff and yeah I know I think that

Where we’ve had better relationship with the trail Builders there is there’s an inherent hierarchy of people where it’s just a desperate group of random folk who just turn up and you go back to that person moving the BMS and stuff you know someone will work on it on a Wednesday

And then someone else will randomly turn up on a Friday and change it all it just never works as well um it just just it just doesn’t seem to have the same impact and everything that gets kind of built there just never last because no one

Ever really can sort of agree well it would appear anything at times you principles of building or anything it’s yeah that hierarchy is really important I think um just to add to that gra I think Liam’s whole presentation was essentially great evidence for our negotiations with a certain landowner

With people MCB at the moment because it it kind of it it it suggests there’s a Nuance to off piece Trail building and riding which I don’t think is often I think that’s taken for granted um and it gives us the evidence to suggest that you know maybe there are

Certain Trail Builders who can be almost like stewards of that land and and genuinely look after it and care for it in a way that maybe not even the land owner does yeah I mean it’s a very specific you know there’s a assuming that the trail is okay where

It is in terms of all the other stuff that goes on within a woodland but yeah no there you know some of the trails that exist in the Sur Hills that are now essentially formal Trails they all started as informal Trails but they’ve still engaging with the original Trail

Building people who understand working in that landscape and have a have an understanding of you know if if this happens here then this will happen there and it and they are the people on the ground who know those kind of nuances that a a range that covers I don’t know

You know X hectares of Woodland doesn’t quite get that that that detail and that yeah I yeah that any evidence that can help us you talk to to these Landes around actually the the worth of these people they’re not just you know middle-aged yobbos Who come out with a a

Shovel and vandalized stuff um you know they do care and they want things to be built properly and Built Well that be good yeah and that going back to what you said about the about disability it’s it’s a real it’s a real problem isn’t it

That almost as much of a problem as the as people people kind of being abused or stigmatized is the kind of is the pity that is leveled at people with impairments because and and I’ve spoken to loads of people with impairments with disabilities who will tell you the same

Thing it’s like that is that’s it’s patronizing and and it and it in sociology we called it like the kind of medical tragedy model it’s the idea that like if you have a disability it’s the it’s the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to you and you should be

Pied on that basis and your whole raise and de your whole reason for living should be therefore to recoup some sense of normality but I spoke to I I’m I’m not exaggerating I spoke to two of these e- mountain bikers with disabilities who told me that becoming disabled was

Almost one of the best things that ever happened to them because it kind of it freed them from all of those um traditional expectations about how you should move and act in sport and physical activity and exposed them to a completely new world of in this case e

Mountain biking that carries with it different forms of sociality different friendship groups different ways of moving different relationships with the outdoors and overall it just told me that although it’s just a real problem for me that you would treat an e- mountain biker as universally disregarding the environment because

Almost because of all those things I’ve just mentioned you find a lot of e- mountain bikers especially those with disabilities feel like they really appreciate what they’ve got and want to look after it more and understand you know really conscientious about the impact those Technologies are having on

The environment and therefore want to offset that by doing other things like a lot of them join kind of advocacy groups or Trail building communities to to to try and offset some of the damage they do and that is all because of the ebike not in spite of it so yeah

Interesting yeah yeah no is the more I I every time I speak to um you know the people involved in for those who don’t know experienced Community it’s a um disability access group Bas the top end of the the peak and they um I suppose

They tend to do more on the people who are more physically disabled than who can ride a a standard ebike but we have an awful lot of like I say hand cycles and recumbents and um e assist um motorized um Mountain trikes off-road Wheelchairs and stuff and it’s just the

They all see the fact that technology has come on so much over the last few years so that it is lighter it’s more it’s more reliable it’s more rugged you can see how much um how much worth they put on the fact that they can now do

These things but they know it’s not perfect because it potentially can do more damage and yes you know they can it’s harder for them to do stuff but I think that means that they they add much more value to that the fact they can actually get to these places and

Interact with these places and do these things it’s a really it’s just like you say it’s so sad when you see the other people who it’s almost like you know that that it is massive judgment and you know you shouldn’t be here um and we again we’re having

Discussions um within the trust around more and more people are using um e ebikes e- mountain bikes and other forms of e-mobility as their Mobility AIDS which legally they’re not Mobility AIDS because the law is million years out date and we’re having these huge discussions you know

If a person comes and they would like to use an ebike or an e- mountain bike around our estate where we would let them use a Mobility Scooter who are we to say no and generally we don’t say no the problem then is it’s the other people who then

See them and if you if there is no physical obvious disability you don’t want to stick in with a yellow tabard and a flag saying hello I’m disabled it’s it’s really it’s it’s yeah it’s it’s challenging but it’s I think there’s a lot of stuff happening at the

Minute that that will only improve these things moving forward but it just needs a bit more um Enlightenment for the folk out there who just don’t see it at all it’s just not on their radar but I think that’s why Jim’s point is so important right that there kind of there’s this

Sort of tragedy of this um nature culture split that is so baked into kind of Western thought like it’s going to it’s going to take a lot to to kind of disassemble that um and and for kind of public understanding of um of nature to be

Shifted um so I think I really enjoyed your talk Jim I thought it was brilliant oh thanks Liam uh Tom C I think is Tom Campbell have you got a question and it is ah guess right thanks guys I only came in towards the end of your session Jim but super interesting

For both a couple of questions I think uh Jim first of all just wondering kind of in terms of what we perceive as as ebikes and how that how that’s possibly going to whether that is likely to change kind of if there’s a if there’s maybe going to be a blurring of the

Distinction between a kind of ebike as they exist now and a normal bike through kind of the the proliferation of Technology around like um electronic componentry whether that’s gear shifting seat posts whatever we have forthcoming um anti-lock braking systems and kind of even we already have automatically self-

Adjusting suspension so even on a non motor electric motorized bike um you can have a huge amount of electronic componentry in there which is kind of just starting to slightly change I think maybe the distinction between um those two modes of of bicycling and I think

Even in in in terms of possibly the implications of some of that so we know that the the ebikes themselves remove that barrier for entry around physical capabilities so some of these Technologies are arguably having the potential to remove a barrier of Entry around your skill set so if you’re

Introducing things actually optimize the bike within a certain terrain makes it safer means you have to have less skill for braking and all these sorts of things so just wondering kind of what your what your thoughts are around that as a potentially really useful uh development in some ways and it might

Just challenge some of some people’s conceptions and perceptions around um what an ebike is and and it’s it’s becoming less separate in many ways from a a more conventional mountain bike I’ve got something for you Liam but I’ll come to that later cheers Tom great question um I

Think Leslie is probably the person Leslie Ingram SS is probably the person to to answer this question but I’ll give it a go I think um I was just writing some some kind of characteristics of the E by E Bike as you were talking there and I think there

Are probably as you well know there’s probably four things that most offend Outsiders about e- mountain bikes um and these aren’t necessarily in any order one is uh the level of Assistance or the nature of assistance which is deemed kind of artificial or unfair or as some

Of my respondents suggested a kind of a form of cheating the second one is the weight uh ebikes tend to be heavier although that’s changing uh the visual aspect of them you know until very recently you could very clearly see that they were ebikes they had a bigger down tube and certain

Components that made them look like a different bike and then there’s the sound which is one that I know Leslie has had some experience of from with participants as well in her research you know the idea that people get scared that ebikes come up from behind them

Without them knowing about it they don’t see them they hear the sound which can be quite men it can sound quite menacing um if you don’t know what it is and then that can kind of startle people but I think what’s what’s fascinating about this a is like as you rightly point out

Where does where does kind of in the case of assistance for instance where does assistance end and begin it’s like you know uh and this came up frequently in the responses like where is it where do we problematize gears are we going to problematize seat drop a seat posts are

We problematizing thicker tires um it’s the same with weight I always have this conversation with people where I point out that you know although ebikes might be heavier on average I’m 20 kilos heavier than many of my friends who I ride with including yourself and leam so

Uh does that mean that I’m having an undue impact on the environment um or you know what what’s the problem there is it the weight or is it the bike and I would suggest it’s probably the stigma of the technology um visually we know that the batteries are getting smaller you’ve got

The the SL versions of a lot of ebikes now which are almost indistinguishable from normal bikes and then sound as well I rode a trek uh EXE the other day and on the lowest mode it is almost literally silent so when we get to the point where all of these things are much

Less obvious than they ever were I think real questions are going to be asked about what the difference is and um although we shouldn’t have to justify that and and make the down tube smaller or make the assistance less to help people I do think it’s going to be

A step in the right direction and I think people’s uh use of them will be stigmatized a lot less as a result did you have a question for Liam did you say yes I do thanks for that nice uh response Jim super interesting Liam I’m fully aware that in your your

Presentation was fascinating I’m going to have to watch the recording several times to fully understand it uh loving your field notes I think so I fully subscribed to the argument um that track shouldn’t be sanitized and running the risk of uh trying not to compare the the DIY

Trail with other types of Trail which which I’m I’m I’m as I understand from the the theory that you brought in at the minute at the outset that’s not what you’re looking to do not trying to establish equivalence and be able to take one model and apply it to another

Um but so that I do however Wonder so that the idea of the risks and challenges of users that we need in there that does differ at the at the individual level so some there is absolutely a requirement for difficult Trails um challeng is mapping the competence of riders to a certain trail

And I think that happens organically through DIY Trails people knowing where they are and whether they can ride them but I do on your your point around the um apprenticeships is really interesting to me and I think there there is a kind of similarity in there to what happens

In the more professional Trail building or what is currently happening in terms of trying to trying to establish a minimum standard I think a minimum s degree of assurance that things are being done in certain ways whether that’s for the the uh person commissioning the tender to have the

Trail built they just want to know that there there is a level of kind of gatekeeping and safekeeping within there and I think the the way that that apprenticeship is kind of working in a really less formal way which is totally appropriate for that DIY Trail just

Seems Seems like a really nice way of of kind of providing that minimum standard or or the degree of assurance um and it it is interesting certainly within a kind of local context knowing how Trails have been built from really experienced Builders and there are challenges when

The the the the younger possibly less experienced Builders come in and it’s again without wanting to try and force something which is DIY and and very kind of hands on the ground into other structures it’s just whether exploring whether there’s there’s some way of adding a degree of formality to that

Process of the apprenticeship without kind of certifying things and making it but just yeah that was just it’s not really a question it’s more an observation I’ll I’ll stop talking no I think it’s a great question because it’s this is the kind of contradiction of DIY

Isn’t it like as soon as as soon as you begin to introduce some kind of framework or um you way of operating it’s it’s no longer DIY I think um in the book chapter there’s there was a group of uh kind of dir jump builders in in Copenhagen that I interviewed who um

They they became very official and they sort of formed this kind of Union it started out DIY it was from it was just outside Christiania so it had this real kind of punk ethos to it and as soon as they kind of talked about becoming a union and becoming official half of the

The kind of original locals like this isn’t for me anymore you know went elsewhere so it’s a really difficult thing to navigate I don’t really know the question like I don’t really know the answer to that but I think something about um these kind of improvise this kind of

Notion of like being of improvisation and the kind of informal networks I guess it’s like doing things like this like starting to kind of understand what they look like and and uh where to kind of how to intervene in the very kind of minute or um what’s the word that I’m looking for

Kind of uh appropriate ways I guess um yeah I don’t know I don’t know it’s a really good question though um I mean I know that uh I know a a Trail Association has a really good um connections with kind of DIY Builders you know you these are all

People that you meet out in the woods and so you have these sort of informal networks already um and I guess it’s a a question of sort of figuring out how to cultivate them and and and and care for them and look after them and and and recognize their fragility right um

Totally yeah I don’t know if that helped no it does yeah super nice one thanks cheers Tom we’ll just if it’s okay we’ll just I’m conscious of the time we’ll finish Hannah’s had a hand up patiently for about 10 or 15 minutes so um we’ll have one final question from Hannah and

Then um we’ll wrap up just at the point you came to me my internet um decided to bottle it but can you hear me now yeah um no I was just coming back to what you’re talking about with disabled riders and I just wondered if they been um or if you’d heard any

Resentment from riders with disabilities against able-bodied people opting to use an ebike when conceivably they did have the physical capacity to ride a conventional bike no I haven’t I haven’t heard anybody say that but it would have been an interesting in retrospect it would have been an interesting question to ask somehow

Um yeah why why why did you ask that question Hannah because I’ve heard it in a in a group of um older Riders which you know is my area of interest um where someone has said he’s riding an ebike he doesn’t need to um and then there’s that judgment but

Also the sort of perception of cheating is maybe created by able-bodied physically fit Riders opting to use a e mountain bike for you know um uplift or just you know because they simply like let’s face it enjoy riding an ebike rather than riding it out of necessity

So I just wondered if the the Able Body Rider on an ebike is creating this um kind of um ethos of cheating or stigmatizing of ebikes because they’re using a tool that is not necessarily essential for their ability to partake in in mountain biking yeah what what I would say is I’m

Probably not familiar with the disability the critical disability studies literature wit large to be able to provide sufficient a sufficient answer to that in the context of disability but um I suspect what you might find there a I mean this is all about ideology for me and and I guess uh after

People like gramsky who was a Marxist in the kind of turn of the century what one of the things he was suggesting about ideology is that you know we we sometimes assume that ideology is a powerful group kind of imposing their will or their view on on on a less

Powerful group but in this case I would I would expect there to be in instances where often ideology is so strong I I.E the ideology of how to use green space and what you should do with your body and how and what technology isn’t isn’t appropriate in those spaces that it

Probably gets adopted by people with impairments as well uh it probably forms part of their identities as much as it does because you know a lot of these people I spoke to didn’t always have impairments they were once able-bodied um and and their impression of the outdoors

Will probably be as strong as as anyone else’s as a result of that um so yeah I would very much expect a lot of and maybe that’s you know one of my colleagues who you know Jack Black he would argue that sometimes it’s really important to acknowledge that that you

Know they may well be disabled but sometimes people are disempowered can be as horrible as those who are empowered um and that’s all a result of ideology and how how strong a draw some ideologies in this case of bre and exercise can be um cheers H gram

Um just it was only on just in relation to that actually a lot of some of the people I’ve spoken to both um disabled users of of of e bikes and that it’s it’s not NE it’s the perception of the improper use of the piece of Kit I think

Is the key so I know lots of people who ebikes because they can ride for further for longer and get a have a much better experience overall which they couldn’t do yes they could ride up the hills but it’s the third Hill they’ll be blowing at the backside and stuff it’s that I

Think it’s for the people I’ve spoken to it’s that perception of well they’re they’re cheating because they’re kind of always sticking on Boost and burning up the hills they’re you know basically being a bit of a dick about it I it’s that side of it that where I’ve heard it

Come from it’s that it’s the misappropriation of the equipment and the tools and what it and the benefits of it rather than the um yeah rather than anything else um yeah and and one thing I think on that that highlights how powerful I’m using the word ideology

But expectations are about ebikes is the fact that even when you’ve bought one like when I wrote another paper on this previously which we kind of where we elaborate on this even when you’ve bought one and you feel confident in your purchase and why you bought

It nearly everyone I know and everyone I speak to who who has an e- mountain bike still spends an inordinate amount of time talking you through why they bought it justifying it and then then you get into the well I only use it on eco anyway all the time because I like to

Stay fit and I never go on turbo or I only treat myself to a bit of Turbo every now and again so um and that that is the you know just because you’ve got an ebike doesn’t mean you’re exempt from those stigmas they’re still there um and that counts for Able Body

As well as disabled uh or impaired users of the countryside as much I I just think it’s sorry Jim Ian like I don’t understand the the kind of internal policing between bike riders I don’t think I ever will but um yeah it’s uh I don’t understand what what

Makes someone feel as though they need to police somebody else’s Behavior whether they’re on an ebike or not it just seems kind of mad to me indeed indeed I think um we should probably wrap up but um I’ll just pop this just before we go as a reminder of the next

Session so um thank you Liam thank you for presenting Today come on oh okay I’ll leave it at that um yeah thank you Liam for presenting really appreciate your time thank you everyone for for joining us uh it’s it’s a difficult time to find time to come to these things so uh yeah it’s always

Great to see so many of you um just a reminder put this on screen can you see that you just confirm Liam that you can see that this is the the schedule schedule of events obviously we’ve we’ve um completed the first of four uh uh April is the next one where Albert Aras

Who was on the call earlier will be telling us all about some of the controversies around Mountain bik practices in the park the caura Barcelona and then we’ve got Brendan mun who G to be calling in at about 5:00 am in the morning because he is uh we’ll be

Calling from Australia who conveniently is also going to be telling us um about uh what people’s motivations are to ride in Queensland Australia so yeah come and Jo us for that if you can no worries if you can’t um thanks again for joining everyone thanks both really good