Another year, another Ecotopia Bike Tour!
This summer, for the 27th time, we’re heading off on another bike tour adventure – we’re inviting you to suggest interesting projects, help out with the organising, and of course, to join us!!
Call out for projects
Planning for the 2017 Ecotopia Biketour has begun and we are on the lookout for projects, communities and places to consider visiting in the region of Germany, France, east of Spain and Switzerland.
Last summer we cycled from Poland, across Belarus and then north through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, visiting a wide range of projects on the way – such as reclaimed gardens, culture houses, social centres, bike kitchens, transition network farms and ecovillages. We joined a queer festival in Lithuania, solidarity demonstrations in Warsaw, fought with the Belarusian bureaucracy, organised bike-fixing workshops and more, whilst learning about local struggles, making connections and sharing skills with communities and experienced alternatives to capitalism and consumerism. We wrote a blog about our experiences and the places we visited, which can be found on our website,
We are an always changing group and, in the sense of political and social backgrounds, quite diverse. Usually our group includes everything from environmental activists to anarchists or just cycle-enthusiasts. Typically people with different levels of experience with the community lifestyle can be found among us, from experienced activists, to people for whom this is the first contact with non-hierarchical community living. One of our aims is to share skills and experience between each other and with the projects that we visit. We bring different abilities with us, from farming, fixing bikes to spreading love around us and fighting social injustice.
Usually we are a group of between 20 and 40 people from all over Europe and other continents at any one time. We are keen to take advantage of our greater number to do mass activities in the places we visit. (Having many participants means we can do work that is better with larger numbers).
We want to have the places we visit as diverse as possible. We are looking for projects of the following kinds:
- Political groups fighting against oppression, such as feminist, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups, groups working with migrants or groups fighting for workers’ rights
- Self-organised projects, co-ops, grassroots movements, DIY projects, political squats and land occupations
- Groups promoting cycling and other environmental activists
- Self-sustainable farms and permaculture projects
- Organisations for alternative education and alternative housing projects
- Bike kitchens, freak bike workshops and other bike related projects
If you know any projects or communities in Germany, France, east Spain and Switzerland that might be interesting to us or to whom we might be interesting, contact us by writing to 2017 at ecotopiabiketour dot net. You’re welcome to forward this e-mail to other mailing lists as well.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
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Greetings,
The Ecotopia Biketour Collective
