Demystifying Ride Leadership Webinar – 24th April 7pm

Thinking about becoming a ride leader but not sure if it’s for you?

Join us for Demystifying Ride Leadership – an interactive online webinar designed to encourage more women+ in Wales to step into leadership roles in mountain biking!

This is the 2nd session in our Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice in Wales series with special guests!

📅 Date: 24th April
⏰ Time: 7:00 – 8:30 PM
📍 Where: Online Register here

In this supportive session, experienced tutors and ride leaders Jo Lee Morris and Claire Sharpe will share their insights, covering:
✅ What a ride leader qualification involves
✅ Who it’s suitable for
✅ Common barriers that may hold women back
✅ A Q&A to address your concerns and boost your confidence
Whether you’re ready to take the next step or just want to learn more, this is a great opportunity to explore ride leadership in a welcoming space.

Share with anyone who might be interested and help us spread the word!

BikePark Wales are leading the way for women in mountain biking!

As part of our work with Beicio Cymru and MB Wales, we’re sharing examples of good practice that support women+ and girls in mountain biking in Wales!


BikePark Wales are doing amazing things to support and grow the women’s MTB community! From social rides to coaching and community-building, they’re making mountain biking more inclusive and accessible. Here’s how:

✨ Women’s Days – Bringing women riders of all abilities from across the UK together for fun, progression, and connection.

💙 Sunday Blues – Women-only blue trail sessions that focus on social riding and building confidence.

📢 Women’s Facebook Group – A safe space to ask questions, share experiences, and connect.
🔧 Maintenance Workshops – Helping women gain skills to keep their bikes running smoothly.

🚵‍♀️ Women’s Coaching Sessions – Supporting progression in a welcoming environment.

🙌 Women Ambassadors – Inspiring and empowering more women to hit the trails!

Click here to join the Facebook group and register for the first women’s social ride of the year on 23rd March here!

Are you supporting women and girls in MTB in Wales? Or interested in the work we’re doing with Project FIAS?

We’d love to hear from you!

Join the conversation on an exciting new discussion platform – a space for building community, sharing knowledge, and supporting women+ in mountain biking.

To join the discussion platform, or get in touch to share your example of supporting women in MTB in Wales, please email Maria.Moxey@Bristol.ac.uk

 

29.09.23.
BikePark Wales.
PIC Š Andy Lloyd
www.andylloyd.photography
@andylloyder

CoP 3: FREE Women+’s MTB Community Building Workshop in Wales!

On Friday 23rd May 2025, as part of our Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice in Wales series, in partnership with Beicio Cymru and MB Wales, Project FIAS will hold a FREE workshop to support women+ across Wales wanting to set up or grow a mountain biking community. The workshop will include structured discussion, guest speakers, and plenty of opportunity for shared learning, and building connections.

Women+’s only communities are hugely valuable for building confidence, progressing in MTB and building lasting connection. Project FIAS have co-created a Women+’s Community Building Toolkit, which sets out best practice, resources and guidance for how women+’s MTB communities can get set up, grow and thrive. The Toolkit was developed in consultation with a range of experts; women+ cycling group leaders, who have generously shared their learnings, challenges and experiences forming, running and organising their communities.

The 4 parts of the Toolkit are:

  1. Planning and initiating: how to get things off the ground.
  2. Recruiting and diversifying: how to reach the women+ you’d like to reach.
  3. Ensuring a positive experience: how to get the vibe right on every ride.
  4. Retaining and sustaining: how to make sure your community thrives and grows.

Want to start or grow a women+ MTB community in Wales?

Join us on Friday 23rd May 2025 at BikePark Wales (or online!) for a FREE workshop as part of our Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice series!


What’s included?
– Inspiring guest speakers
– Expert insights and shared learning
– Unpacking the FIAS Toolkit for building a thriving MTB community
– Connections with like-minded women+ riders
– Afternoon ride at BikePark Wales for in-person attendees!

Why join?
Women+ MTB communities are valuable for developing confidence, skill, progression, and lifelong friendships – and we want to help you kickstart, grow and sustain yours!

Who is the event for?
– Women+ looking to start an MTB community in Wales.
– Existing Women+ MTB leaders wanting your communities to grow, develop & be more inclusive.

In-person spots are limited! Apply now via the online form. Not selected, or can’t attend in person? You can still join online!

📅 Friday 23rd May 2025
📍 BikePark Wales & Online

🔗 https://lnkd.in/e5wAzaMU

Please share with anyone who may be interested!

Reflection on Reframing MTB, Bristol 2025

 

Reframing Mtb is more than just a conference. It’s a rare, valuable chance for a cross-sector conversation that focuses, laser sharp, on the challenges and opportunities we face in our sport. It brings together competitors in industry, grassroots champions who would never otherwise meet, and landowners who normally sit behind desks.

Reframing Mtb is the closest we will ever get to forging an alliance across all parts of mountain biking, via transdisciplinary conversation and collaboration. It’s powerful.

For two years, Reframing Mtb has been in Sheffield. Both times, I’ve returned excited, refreshed and full of energy for what we can achieve in our small corner of the UK. This year, we hosted the event in Bristol, making the most of the multiple hats I wear – as Associate Professor in Marketing and Consumption at the University of Bristol Business School and Project Lead for FIAS (Fostering Inclusive Action Sports), as trustee of Ride Bristol trail association, and as founder and leader of Bristol Shredders children’s mountain bike club.

I have three reflections I’d like to share from the day of roundtables and the following day of practical activities and rides that made up Reframing Mtb 2025: The Bristol Edition.

1. Learning the meaning of collaboration

Putting on any form of conference is huge. It took a lot of time and energy from the organising committee, made up of original Reframing people Manon Carpenter, Henry Norman, Jasmin Patel and Henry Norman PLUS four of us from Ride Bristol (Bridget Wyatt, Jamie Edwards, Tim Knowles and myself). There were a few bumps, but the strength of our collaboration astounded me. We all brought skills and experience, carrying each other when distractions disrupted and life got in the way. I grew to enjoy our meetings, wishing innumerable times that other committees and boards I work with behave so respectfully, with such competence, and worked so effectively.

That collaboration spread beyond the core group. Like a ripple of quiet energy, the event became manifest. We brought in sponsors, sold tickets, arranged speakers and curated agendas. We brought others in too, who supported us and shared expertise and energy in ways I was constantly in awe of.

On the day itself, the theme of collaboration came alive through the non-stop conversation and palpable focus around the round tables. The carefully curated table plan meant the right people met, talked, listened and really, deeply connected. “The best conversations I’ve had for ages” became a refrain.

2. They expansive dynamics of cultural production

Project FIAS is focused understanding and addressing gender inequality in mountain biking. It made sense for me to chair the first theme of the conference. It was exciting to see how the speakers tackled the topic – ranging from inclusive events, to personal experiences of inclusion, to exploring new research findings on different forms of exclusion. These talks, and the workshop that followed, consistently validated our own research on FIAS. I resisted the temptation to keep yelling ‘yes!’ every time someone mentioned the market-mediated culture of the sport, and the power that its media has in shaping our collective understandings of who’s out and who’s in.

My latest focus is on cultural production and the gendered dynamics of the marketing and media sectors. Some of the people I have interviewed, or people like them, were in the room. Some looked awkward as we focused on media representation as lacking progressiveness, and missing the mark in terms of its transformative potential, or in terms of understanding its responsibility. At one point I asked a journalist how they were finding the day: “I’m out of my depth”, he said. I thought “good. this is the first step”.

As the day went on, I realised how important the cultural representation of mountain biking is beyond its participants, and even beyond the women and girls who currently feel that mountain biking is off the radar. I realised that our capacity to leverage funding for community projects and really open mountain biking up to communities that could benefit from the myriad of mental, physical and social benefits it offers, is severely limited by our current image. Where are our invitations to engage with national policy makers, with public health, with conversations at the highest level that seek to tackle the social problems of our age – social isolation, mental ill health and obesity. Not to mention nature connectedness and pro-environmental orientation.

3. Untapped potential

Mountain biking has the capacity to change lives. I see it every week. Children thriving through the friendships, fresh air and strength of riding together. They breathe in the trees, soak in the mud and come back from a ride just a bit stronger. I see adults growing in confidence as they grow in skill, and as they forge connections and make friends. And everyone changes as they play – whizzing along on wheels, feeling the thrill of adrenaline and just the right level of peril. Every week I find my self thinking again that mountain biking is the antidote to screens, disconnection, anxiety, overwhelm and so much else that represents modern life.

To open mountain biking up to more than white and wealthy people, we need resources. We need easy, well maintained trails, free bike hire, transportation links, coaching, community groups and taster days. We need cash. We need political support. We need those with power and influence to see what we see when we take groups out on the trails.

I leave Reframing Mountain Biking absolutely exhausted, and also raring to go. I want to forge connections just begun last week, and to continue the charge of understanding and addressing how mountain biking and other outdoor action sports can contribute with such value to society.

Thank you to all those involved:

¡ Manon Carpenter

¡ Jasmin Patel

¡ Henry Norman

¡ Emma Peasland

¡ Bridget Wyatt

¡ Tim Knowles

¡ Jamie Edwards

¡ Chris Leeks

¡ James Adamson

¡ Pete Scullion

Our sponsors: Trek, Velosolutions, Vida, Shift Active Media, Starling Cycles, Pedal Progression, Patagonia and The University of Bristol Business School

Our speakers: Bex Baroana and Chloe Taylor, Aneela McKenna, Lyndsey Hollands, Dom Ferris, Harry Brook, Ben Billet, Kate Thoday, Andy Davies, Manon Carpenter.

This is the film that explains Project FIAS (Fostering Inclusive Action Sport)

FIAS (Fostering Inclusive Action Sport) is a research-engagement-impact project based at the University of Bristol. The project sets out to understand and address gender inequality in mountain biking, which is stubborn and pervasive. Our starting point is that action sports like mountain biking should be more open to marginalised genders and groups underrepresented in traditional, competitive sports. These sports are opportunities for self-expression and for connection more than competition. Yet, action sports are pretty much all male-dominated and have become sites for the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity. Our research set out to understand why, and to mobilise collective, collaborative efforts to address gender inequality.

Our research has mainly focused on three areas: the experiences of women navigating mountain bike culture, including participation but also leadership; the way women engage with the ‘cultural representation’ of mountain biking (its media); and the gendered institutional dynamics governing the production of marketing and media. We have mapped out an ecosystem of practices that make up mountain bike ‘culture’, and developed a Framework that identifies mechanisms for change that will mobilise progress. No one organisation or person has responsibility – we have to work together.

We also developed a community building toolkit, because we recognise the importance of women only communities for forging out space for women to find, and thrive in, mountain biking. Our toolkit foregrounds mechanisms for women to move from rider to leader and to integrate in (and transform!) mountain biking more broadly.

The FIAS team works with a range of stakeholders in mountain biking to embed the FIAS Framework and drive strategic activities to progress gender justice. These include national organisations like Beicio Cymru, British Cycling, Forestry England and IMBA but also grassroots organisations and industry. Our work continues, but this film gives a snippet of some of the work we have done to date. It introduces our incredible FIAS steering group who helped guide the first few years of FIAS, and showcases our FIAS launch, which was in Bristol back in sunny October. Enjoy the film, and do get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions for collaboration. Fiona.spotswood@bristol.ac.uk.

We’ve officially launched the Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice in Wales!

We’ve officially launched the Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice in Wales!

In partnership with Beicio Cymru and MB Wales, we kicked things off on Thursday 27th Feb, with an energising first session – fuelled by ideas, passion, and enthusiasm from all who joined!

This is just the beginning! Our upcoming plans, shaped by the FIAS Framework’s four priority areas, will help grow and develop women’s MTB in Wales.

Want to be part of the community of practice?

Email Maria.Moxey@Bristol.ac.uk to join the Community of Practice and help shape the development of women’s offroad cycling in Wales!

Keep an eye on our Instagram & LinkedIn for exciting opportunities coming up!

Ross Duffield is changing the game for women and girls in mountain biking!

As part of our work with Beicio Cymru and MB Wales, we’re showcasing stories of people supporting women and girls in Mountain biking!

Events and racing can be an important part of integrating into MTB culture. However, events and races can be exclusionary to women and girls…

Ross Duffield is changing the game for women and girls in mountain biking!

Recognising the unique challenges women face in preparing for races, Ross has worked with the Welsh XC Series to introduce led laps for the race series – giving women and girls a chance to practice on the course without the men.

These led-laps have been a huge hit, with women of all ages gaining skills, confidence, and building a supportive network of riders!

It’s all about making racing more accessible, building confidence, and creating a stronger women’s MTB community!

Are you supporting women and girls in MTB in Wales?

We want to hear from you!

Please email Maria.Moxey@Bristol.ac.uk to hear more about the work we’re doing and how you can be part of the new Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice in Wales!  

 

Launching the Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice in Wales!

In partnership with MB Wales, Beicio Cymru and Project FIAS:

MB Wales is committed to establishing Wales as a global leader in gender inclusivity in mountain biking. MB Wales has adopted the FIAS Framework to shape the realisation of this goal. The Framework is underpinned by rigorous academic research about mountain bike culture in the UK. It identifies four strategic areas that should be prioritised in order to drive cultural shift and address the existing male dominance and masculinisation of mountain biking:

 

What is the Women’s Offroad Community of Practice?

Through collaboration between Beicio Cymru, the MB Wales Women and Girls Officer, Lindsay Hanley and Project FIAS, we plan to introduce a number of targeted activities for MB Wales that map against the FIAS Framework and will contribute to MB Wales’s ambitions to support women+ and girls in mountain biking and become a leader in fostering inclusive action sport.

As part of this work, we are setting up a Women’s Offroad Cycling Community of Practice to share experience, exchange knowledge, and to provide support for each other, with the shared goal to help drive the development of women’s offroad cycling in Wales.

The sessions are organised around the 4 priority areas of the FIAS Framework:

  1. CoP 1: Thurs 27th Feb – Online 7-8.30pm – Theme: Introduction to MB Wales and FIAS plans, Regional champions, Future CoP sessions.
  2. CoP 2: Thurs 24th April – Online 7-8.30pm – Theme: Demystifying Ride Leadership
  3. CoP 3: Fri 23rd May – Hybrid – Bike Park Wales 9.30am-4.30pm – Theme: FIAS Community Building Toolkit workshop followed by a ride for those who attend in person.
  4. CoP 4: Thurs 26th June – Online 7-8.30pm – Theme: Inclusive events workshop.
  5. CoP 5: Sat 26th July – in person at Afan, Glyncorrwg Mountain Bike Centre – Theme: Storytelling and cultural representation, followed by a ride.

Who can join?

Anyone interested in supporting the development of women’s offroad cycling in Wales is welcome to join the CoP sessions. Some activities will be targeted towards specific groups (e.g. women’s MTB community leaders), while others are open to anyone.

The first Community of Practice session is Thursday 27th February!

To join the first introductory CoP session this Thursday, please register here. Please share this invitation with anyone who may wish to join.

What to expect from session 1?

  • Introduction to Project FIAS (Fostering Inclusive Action Sports)
  • Introduction to the new MB Wales Women and Girls Officer – Lindsay Hanley
  • Introduction to our exciting plans to support women and girls in MTB in Wales
  • Introduction to our incredible new team of FIAS MTB Regional Champions!

Trail Hub Discussion Platform:

We have also set up a thread on the Trail Hub discussion platform titled ‘Supporting women and girls in mountain biking’. This is a space to share examples of best practice, exchange knowledge, share resources, ask and offer ongoing support for each other. If you would like to join the discussion platform, please email Maria.Moxey@Bristol.ac.uk

For any questions, please contact:

Project FIAS Policy Fellow: Maria.Moxey@Bristol.ac.uk

Project FIAS lead: Fiona.Spotswood@Bristol.ac.uk

Meet Pippa Boss – a mountain biking inspiration from mid-Wales!  

Project FIAS are working with MB Wales and Beicio Cymru to help make Wales a global leader for gender-inclusive mountain biking! As part of this work, we are showcasing stories where people are supporting women in mountain biking in Wales… 

 

Meet Pippa Boss – a mountain biking inspiration from mid-Wales!  

 

As a coach, Breeze leader, and all-around mountain biking enthusiast, Pippa is part of a supportive community for women who ride together every Friday. What started as a Facebook group has blossomed into a tight-knit group of friends who support each on and off their bikes.  

 

Pippa also leads Breeze rides, where some of the women now confidently arrange their own group rides and enjoy other activities together like cold water swimming!  

 

Pippa is passionate about mountain biking in the Cambrian Mountains and loves showing off her ‘patch’ to other women’s groups – recently guiding ‘Worcester Women on Wheels’ and the ‘Dirt Divas’ around the Elan Valley! 

 

Pippa also leads other off-road adventures including bikepacking trips and night riding , encouraging more women to embrace the trails and boost their self-esteem along the way! 

Are you supporting women and girls in MTB in Wales? Or curious about the work we’re doing with Project FIAS?  

We’d love to hear from you!  

 Join the conversation on an exciting new discussion platform – a space for building community, sharing knowledge, and supporting women+ in mountain biking.  

 To join the discussion platform, or get in touch to share your example of supporting women in MTB in Wales, please email Maria.Moxey@Bristol.ac.uk  

 

Reframing MTB Conference

Reframing MTB Conference – A UK mountain biking event dedicated to creating a more inclusive, fun, and sustainable future for the sport.

Tickets are on sale but closing soon!

When: Friday 7th & Saturday 8th March
Where: MShed, Bristol City Centre. Co-hosted by Ride Bristol.

Join us for engaging talks and discussions to shape the future of mountain biking. Help create a stronger future for the sport.

Friday Themes:
1. Creating Inclusive MTB Environments

Speakers: Aneela McKenna (MĂłr Diversity), Henry Norman (Ride Sheffield), Bex Baraona & Chloe Taylor (Gowaan Racing), Lyndsey Hollands (Limitless Program).

Topics: Engaging new audiences and designing spaces that maximize mountain biking for everyone.

2. Building a Stronger MTB Sector

Speakers: Andy Davies (Dean Trail Volunteers), Kate Thoday (Forestry England), Dom Ferris (Trash Free Trails).

Topics: Collaboration with businesses, volunteers, researchers, and landowners to strengthen trail networks and support trail builders.

3. Promoting Sustainable MTB

Speakers: Benjamin Billet (European Network of Outdoor Sports), Manon Carpenter (Reframing MTB), Harry Brook (Patagonia UK).

Topics: The benefits of outdoor sports, and how brands and riders can work together to promote responsible mountain biking and protect the environment.

What Else Is Going On?

Friday: Talks and workshops at M-Shed starting at 9:30 AM. If you attend just one day, make it Friday!

After, join us for a social evening in Bristol. Don’t forget to book a hotel!

Saturday: Rides, workshops, and fun on the trails at Ashton Court, Bristol’s volunteer-maintained MTB trails. Explore various activities and enjoy our Bristol trails social ride.

Sunday – BONUS DAY: A trip to Pedalabikeaway at the Forest of Dean with Dean Trail Volunteers.

Join a workshop ride on adaptive trails, then enjoy a tour of the Cycle Centre’s trails. We’ll wrap up the weekend with a fun social ride through the Forest of Dean’s trails.

All are welcome, particularly those interested in developing mountain biking, including bike industry members, trail associations, event organizers, and riders.

There’s parking nearby, great train access and we can even store bikes inside the venue. Full details for travel and accommodation are here on the Reframing website.

For more information, contact: reframingmtb@gmail.com.