Bike Month at MU

Thanks to the City of Melville's Active Community grants, Murdoch University got a generous grant to hold a bike safety check up stand and host our famous Bike to Uni Breakfast. We also had funding to hold a 'Rusty Riders' workshop, but due to no enrollments we had to cancel that.

The bike safety and maintenance check saw about 25 bikes get a good going-over for safety and repair issues, with most of them requiring simple but important tweaks for safe and comfortable riding. About 20 staff and students turned up for a lovely Bike to Uni breakfast on Bush Court- as the only criteria was that they turned up on a bike, we were happy to reward both our newest commuter and our longest distance commuter with fantastic Your Move prize packs.

Lessons learnt: After a discussion with People on Bicycles' Christina, there's a thought that the Rusty Riders workshop name needs to be re-thought. We were really surprised that no-one signed up for this, as it's been very popular in the past. Outreach continues to be a challenge, even more so in these Covid-affected times. We had nice posters made up and professionally distributed within the City of Melville boundaries - and then discovered that many cafes with poster walls were either no longer in business or no longer offered sit-down service, so we had the posters re-printed as flyers. Next time we will go with postcards rather than traditional A3 posters. Social media outreach was spotty - not sure if Melville promoted the events on their socials, which would have gotten a better response. Internal MU socials, digital screens and also postering was quite thorough.

For the first time, we relied on QR codes to link to reservation booking. I think this might have put some folks off. I do believe that, like most places, we find that many staff and students are working and studying from home, so perhaps our events need to be held at busier centres or only on weekends.

In summary, I think Bike Month activities always take a lot of forethought, planning and actual doing, and we love it! but it would be so much more rewarding if we had better and more diverse attendance. What are your secrets for getting good attendance at your bike events?