Clarion Epic
A four-day cycle ride from London to Liverpool in the spirit of the Clarionettes – members of the Clarion Cycling Club, one of the UK's first cycling clubs founded in 1894 – who distributed the Clarion newspaper and the socialist word, and gained a sense of freedom, fellowship, and access to the wider countryside.
www.twoaddthree.org
www.clarionepic.blogspot.com
Interview with Jack Thurston's Bike Show on ResonanceFM:
http://thebikehshow.net/2008/08/0604-august-2008-cycling-politics-and-ideology
Bespoke jerseys made by quiltmaker Charlotte Walters - bearing designs by Walter Crane, socialist artist and cartoonist for the Clarion newspaper, and emblazoned on the back with the original Clarion mottos derived from William Morris' words in A Dream of John Ball. Adapted from classic woollen European champions' kit.
The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home
A roundtable discussion at The Institute was attended by several artists, activists, a filmmaker, a champion cyclist and bike shop owner, a former trade unionist, and a politics and performance academic.
Questions tackled:
- Are cyclists inherently conformist or nonconformist?
- How are they politicised by their choice to ride a bike for transport?
- What is requisite for status as a 'cyclist'?
- How has the economic shift in bike-riders changed the popular view of cycling since the origin of the Clarion?
- How are cities best navigated, and what is the relationship between the motorised and nonmotorised?
- How do people incorporate activism into their daily lives by choosing to ride a bicycle?
- Should a Clarion Epic take place annually to/from the European City of Culture?
The ride depended upon assistance from cycling club members along the way, in the form of route guidance, accomodation, hospitality. This included personal tours of the Coventry Transport Museum (historically the UK centre of bicycle manufacture), Port Sunlight (model village), and Stoke's 'pits and post' industrial heritage.
Thanks to (in chronological order): Charlotte Walters; Andrew Davies of Bicycle Works in Edinburgh; Cycling Club Hackney; Nisha Duggal, Amy Feneck and Jo Wilson; Ian & Jane Clark of the National and Fenland Clarion Cycling Clubs; Colin & Jess Watt; Terry Bush & Bill of the Bedfordshire Road Cycling Club; Lesley Robertson, Cycles Curator at the Coventry Transport Museum and vice-chair of Coventry Road Cycling Club; Michael Richards; Barry & Pauline Wilkinson and Dave & Mary Joynson of the Kidsgrove Wheelers; Sue Booth, Roy Bunnell, Joan, Janet Gregory, and Peter Williams of the CTC; Penny and Dan; Gary, Lena, Neal, Gabriel and Sid at The Institute.