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.
