As our calendars, phones and social media feeds ticked into 2025, there was a collective moment of consolidation worldwide as people everywhere evaluated what they wanted from the coming year.
Those first few days and weeks were about setting the tone for the months to come and we all had to choose to follow the status quo or define ambitious goals or somewhere in the middle.
As we near mid-February, for Cycling Culture Club, the overarching objective remains clear and simple:
To help diversify cycling.
We, as a collective, me as a founder, can play a part in achieving that, but only by setting smaller, more achievable milestones to hold ourselves accountable each year. Year one, 2024, was about laying the foundations, doing the groundwork to allow us to build Cycling Culture Club into a broader and more influential platform to move the needle on diversity in cycling.
In February, I set some core milestones:
August 2024 - New CCC branding
September 2024 - First CCC podcast
October 2024 - First CCC Substack newsletter
End of 2024 - Onboard 50th contributor
January 2025 - First commercial partnerships
I'm pleased to say that three out of five of those objectives are firmly completed, one in progress, and one that we sadly missed.
Midway through 2024, we launched our new branding. I worked directly with Richard, one of our contributors - hailing from South Africa - to soften the corporate aesthetic I had whipped up in late 2024, add more personality, embody the cultural variances in our community and create an identity that would follow us onward. I wanted something that we could apply to all of our branding material including merchandise down the line.
In October, I sat down with Alvin Escajeda for our very first episode of CCC Connections, the start of an audio journey that I've thoroughly enjoyed. Being able to have deep and meaningful conversations with a wide spectrum of diverse individuals has already been a great personal pleasure. I have a bunch of brilliant guests lines up and the aim is to release those bi-weekly throughout the year.
The CCC Newsletter has been an unfortunate casualty of a busy year. A number of things made it challenging. Firstly, producing enough regular content to make a newsletter is surprisingly challenging! Onboarding contributors is one thing, coercing 50 busy people to dedicate time and energy to a lofty cause is another challenge altogether. This will be a huge focus for 2025, ensuring their voices are heard more often filling this space with diverse stories. Secondly, should the content be there and ready to share, it still requires somebody to tie it together in a cohesive narrative for a newsletter, curate an email list, promote the newsletter to grow that list and actually produce it on a regular basis. No small task, but with people more time-poor than ever, it will be a critical mouthpiece for Cycling Culture Club.
In December we onboarded our 50th contributor and happily breezed right past, on that trajectory, I'm hoping we can double again in 2025. I couldn't be happier with our diverse roster and I cannot wait to see how they all integrate into the ecosystem to bring more content to the fore. The aim is always quality, the right people with the right vision but equally the more voices we can bring together the more we move that needle.
Aside from those objectives, we've achieved more besides. A nomination for Diversity Champion in the Bikebiz Awards - that came as a total surprise - but meant that the industry was sitting up and paying attention. Over 1000 followers on Instagram and recognition and interest from recognisable names in the industry, like Phil Young and Justin Williams.
So What's Next?
We have some well-defined content platforms, we have a great roster of contributors, and we're gathering awareness from the industry at large, so what comes next?
We set ambitious objectives for the year to come, some achievable under our own steam, others requiring brand support to make a reality.
Add more contributors weekly
Bringing contributors and their audiences together with ride-outs
Encourage contributors to contribute once monthly, aiming for 540 stories per year
Spotlighting community projects globally
Helping to fund and support riders at various stages of their journeys
Provide an alternative to traditional media, with a wider variety of voices
Be a well-known hub for all underrepresented groups in cycling, globally
Bring people together physically, with meet-ups at key cycling industry events
Be a vessel for increased allyship, through an allyship program, in collaboration with key brand partners and complementary organisations.
Create a data hub in partnership with major academic institutions to draw a line in the sand for diversity in cycling
More Content
A monthly newsletter rounding up stories (do better than I did this year!)
A bi-weekly podcast featuring contributors + other guests
Regular interviews with visionaries and industry professionals
A Discord community to allow for more regular connection
In-person meet-ups at key industry events with content
More Tools
A community database & map on the website so that riders can find like-minded communities.
A creative directory full of diverse writers, creatives and talent for brands to use
D+I strategic support to any brands that can recognise their own opportunity to be allies in this space
Allyship in cycling digital course, inspired by what the North Face did in the outdoors, to give people knowledge and confidence to be outspoken and make change
Create Data
Have you ever noticed how little data there is surrounding diversity in cycling? Well, me neither until I started this project. How can we feasibly track progress, if we don't know what the benchmark is?
Therefore, as a stretch goal, I would love to collaborate with an academic institution and the cycling industry to conduct a study setting a baseline for diversity in cycling.
More Reach
You can't ignore the base metrics. These metrics will help bring in commercial partnerships that give us the means to reach our loftier goals. For this, we'll focus on reach, our contributors - who provide the bulk of our reach - our social channels, where we would like to get to 10,000 followers and our wider activity that connects us with more people. Ride-outs, meet-ups and relevant brand collaborations.
100 Contributors by the end of 2025
10,000 followers on social media
Dedicated YouTube channel for podcasts and interviews
Calendar of events, rides and meet-ups
And that's that, my plan for Cycling Culture Club in 2025, if you're reading this and thinking, how can I help? Then the first step is to get in touch and we can chat. If you're reading this and thinking 'Call that ambitious' then I want to chat too, constructive challenges are helpful. If you're a brand and you'd like to support what we do or get involved with some of our projects, then please reach out. If you're a contributor and you're reading this, it's a heartfelt thank you from me and a call for us to do more together this year.
Every year, I want to lay these milestones in well, stone so I can be held accountable to the progress of Cycling Culture Club. Without these goals, this could be a listing labour that treads the road to nowhere.
Thanks, Miles
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