A couple of years ago I innocently put up a blog post asking if there should be an Edinburgh Festival of Cycling? It seemed like a good idea at the time, now on the eve of the second Edinburgh Festival of Cycling, I still can’t believe that it is happening. It is not just that EdFoC (as we affectionately call it) has been listed as one of the UK’s best cycling festivals by The Guardian and Total Women’s Cycling. It’s also that I have been asked for advice on how to run a successful cycling festival by people as far away as Canada and Australia!

As a result of this experience I have decided to put together this wee Q & A:

How did EdFoC start?

Ironically in a way, it started with a mass protest ride called Pedal on Parliament, which in itself started as twitter conversation between three friends. When we started planning PoP, we had to get permission and give an estimate of number of the people we expected to turn up. I said “put down 300 and if 50 turn out we are doing well”. On the day an estimated 3,000 turned up. This made me think that there was an appetite for everyday cycling and I decided that what Edinburgh needed was a Festival of Cycling, and set about organising one.

Is it open access, like Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

Yes, we invite people to organise their own cycling/bicycle related events. The festival acts as a banner for all sorts of events, some are already well established such as the Edinburgh to St Andrews ride (65 miles) and the Spokes Bike Breakfast, both of which have been running for years, but were happy to become a part of the Festival. Others events are brand new, such as the Edinburgh inter-schools MTB championships and the Women’s Cycling Forum (both firsts for the UK).

Are any events run directly by your organisation or is it all community generated?

Yes, the Festival does run some of the events too, we organise a number of talks, exhibitions and the highly success full Night Ride (which has sold out both years and has been described as a “magical experience” on its first outing). I should also point out that the Edinburgh Festival of Cycling Ltd is a community based social enterprise, and any profits from running the festival are invested into grass roots cycling in the city.

Do you have any records of the numbers of participants from the festival last year?

It is hard to know exactly how many people took part in the festival last year, as we had 40+ events across more than 30 different venues, over nine days. I would estimate that there were at least 1,500 – 2,000 people in total. We did gather feedback on the festival through an online survey, which showed that over 80% of those who responded rated the Festival as Very Good or Excellent, which we were very pleased with.

Do you know if participants were regular bike riders or were non-riders engaged with the festival as well?

From the limited snap shot of the feedback survey, we know that most of those who responded were already cyclists, but just about all of them said that it had encouraged them to cycle more. Those who were not currently cycling (and there were a few) said wanted to give it a try again because of the festival.

Up date, a few more questions have been asked, which I have added here.

Do we charge a fee to event organisers for having their events listed?

Yes we have a fee of £20 for listing events (other Festivals in the city charge higher fees), this is something we will look at again after the
festival this year and maybe go to a two trier system, for commercial and non commercial events.

What about events which register after the printed guide has been released?

Here we still charge the fee, as to do otherwise would create an incentive to wait and add events late.

What sort of marketing does EdFoC do to promote the whole event?

Most of our marketing is through social media and press releases as we started with a zero budget. This year we did take out a display Ad in a
cycling magazine, but the budget is still very limited. There is also the printed programme, which we distribute through out the city. This year we distributed 10,000 copies of the printed programme.

Are event organisers expected to do some of their own promotion and if so, do they understand this?

Yes event organisers are expected to do some of their own promotion, we make this clear on the booking form for inclusion in the festival. Certainly most (probably all, I haven’t had time to check) event organisers do some of their own promotion. Interestingly last year we had reports that event organisers had large increases in traffic to their websites, much of which was click thought from the EdFoC website, so they felt that they had seen a clear benefit to being a part of the festival.

Hope that this is some use, of course if you have any more questions, I always happy to try and help.