On mutual bicycle aid. community bike workshops in Australia

While the original formulation of ‘mutual aid’ by Kropotkin was radical and linked to changing political conditions, mutual aid in the voluntary sector of contemporary Australian society cuts across political positions, gender, race, and wealth. In this short article we will recount engagement with a growing movement of bike activists and volunteers who challenge consumerism and automobility in the transition to greener modes of transport, through their work in community bike workshops or bike kitchens. As the Australian bike workshop movement expands slowly, it is demonstrating that low-cost grassroots movements can encourage change, just as much as supply-side interventions like expensive bike lanes and engineering safer streetscapes do. Workshops ‘engineer’ a change in values.