Festival "For a Biking City"

On July 14 will be held in New Holland the Festival For a Biking City! The program comprises a bicycle parade from Pioneer Square to New Holland, a performance by the Danish specialist of cycling infrastructure's planning, a bicycle market, an exhibition of unusual bicycles, a BMX-competition and an open biking class, lectures, film screenings and, of course, music.

The main purpose of the festival and the competition is to raise official awareness of St. Petersburg’s growing cycling community, and therefore to show the need to develop infrastructures for this type of transport. The participants of the festival will be offered the possibility to sign a postcard addressed to the Governor Georgy Poltavchenko calling for concrete decision making in terms of biking infrastructures. All requests will be sent to Smolny.

12:00-23:00

Exhibition of vintage bikes by Igor Baronas, an exhibition and sale of bicycles and bike accessories by sponsors and partners (Strida, Jam Bike, Vse Fiksiruj, Syndicate, Velozvonok, Velo-Melo and others), a repairing and tuning masterclass of Fixed Lab bikes, badminton, table tennis, petanque.

An Electra place-your-face-photo-stand-in will be installed for the visitors to take funny pictures. Visitors can also have a look at the performances of BMXs bikers in the skate pool.

13:00-14:00

Open lesson Biking School

The open lesson Biking School will be about the basics of safe bycicle driving in an urban context. Instructors will give talks about basic road rules, analyze concrete examples and complex cases, and will give advice on how to drive along the city safely.

15:00-16:30

Lecture by the urbanist Louise Vogel Kielgast

New Holland is glad to welcome Louise Vogel Kielgast, an expert in the development of cycling infrastructure who works for Gehl Architects, and who will give on stage an open lecture. Louise will come from Copenhagen specially for the festival in order to talk about biking-friendly cities: she will tell us where to start and where it is better not to, how to work with the government, and what are the first steps of cities such as New York and London, which started to promote cycling only 4-5 years ago.

16:30-18:30

Open discussion with experts

The open discussion Perspectives of cycling infrastructures' development in St. Petersburg will focus on the process of building biking infrastructures and security conditions for St. Petersburg bikers - the key issues for St. Petersburg’s bicyclisation - from the history of cycling to support initiatives by the Legislative Assembly. Panelists will be: Oleg Pachenkov (CISR), Olga Galkina (Member of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg), Vyacheslav Semenenko (Advisor to the Governor of St. Petersburg), Sophie Chilingarova (Open Lab City), Alexander Minakov (urbanist), Daria Tabachnikova ( Velosipedizatsiya), Sergey and Maria Nikitin (Velonoch) and others.

20:30-23:00

Concert

The festival For a Biking City will end up with two concerts of Russian emerging bands, which will perform on New Holland’s stage.

Interdeer - these young guys play a cheerful and beautiful music, and their soloist, Ilya Lagutenko, is rated as slightly more attractive than most of the Russian singers.

21Outside - is a project, which hides a lonely boy - Cyril black, who is creating a pleasant, unobtrusive electronic music.

Check out for updates! http://vk.com/zavelogorod

Project Coordination by the Internet newspaper The Village and Velosipedizacia Petersburg