A New Dawn for Bike 4 Health

Bike 4 Health was established as a Community Interest Company back in 2014 and since then has positively impacted over 4000 children in 27 schools throughout the North East through our cycling programmes in and out of school.

Mostly working in deprived areas in Primary and High Schools through our work we encourage participation, engagement, exploration, health, confidence and resilience in our riders.

Our work spreads out into the wider community via the schools to families and friends, organisations and youth groups who we then work with to deliver the positive benefits of simply riding and having a bike in your life!

We are delighted to have gained the support of The National Lottery through the BIG Lottery Fund. Their support principally enables us to establish a functional base for our activities from which we can operate more efficiently. We are all about #morekidsonbikes.

We are setting up our new base at Thorneyford Farm in Kirkley, Northumberland, already established as a cycling venue with Kirkley Café and used by local cycling clubs for coaching, rides and racing. Our base will provide storage for our fleet of bikes that are used in schools, and through a fully functioning workshop deliver the regular servicing and maintenance that the fleets needs.

The workshop will significantly enhance our ability to provide mobile and pop up servicing that we currently undertake for other bikes fleets in schools, community groups and commercial organisations.

We are a Community Interest Company, not for profit, but we are and do need to be financially sustainable. The National Lottery, recognise this in how we operate, and their help allows us to invest in capital elements that under normal circumstances would be and has been difficult.

Our new base will allow us to increase our commercial services such as bike workshop services, event support and cycling challenges, this in turn supports our work in schools by keeping their costs lower. School budgets are always under pressure so by keeping our costs to schools lower we can still get a chance to make a positive impact on kids through our programmes.

So, our project begins (or rather continues) with a new and very exciting chapter. We will be doing our best to keep you updated with progress on setting up our new base. Between shifting, cleaning, pointing and painting we will aim to post some social media updates and some before, during and after photos!

Thanks to The National Lottery for their support and we look forward to working with them over the next two years and perhaps beyond.

And a BIG thanks for your continued support either through our schools and community work or by using our bike services, they both complement each other and make us sustainable so please share our good news with as many of your contacts as possible and look out for further updates!