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Welcome to Hastings Bike Project – a volunteer-led community bike workshop and registered CIC. We’ve been helping to keep people riding and keeping used bikes out of landfill since 2012. We aim to divert bikes out of the waste stream as an alternative to throw away culture. We take unwanted bikes and repair and reuse them. We aim to empower our community through volunteer sessions, knowledge sharing and a facility to repair bikes - taking a DIY and DIT (Doing It Together) approach - with a focus on person-to-person interaction. We aim to provide access to fun, healthy and sustainable transport and travel autonomy across social barriers and encourage riding wherever possible. Our volunteers give their time and expertise in the spirit of reciprocity to the mutual benefit of all. A few years ago we opened small cafe on the premises - Kuma Coffee - as another income stream which also provides local jobs.

 

We run public sessions on Saturday mornings from 10-12 pm which are open too all. These are run on a first come, first served basis. We will diagnose your bicycle with you, conduct a bike check and work out a priority for repairs. We encourage you use the tools and do the work yourself with the guidance and supervision of one of our volunteers. As such we do ask that you manage your expectations – these sessions are not for full services or custom bike builds! The goal here is to learn a bit more about your bike, get a feel for the tools and gain knowledge and confidence along the way.

We aim to keep these sessions as accessible and affordable for all and to lower financial barriers wherever possible – there is no fixed charge and the public sessions are pay what you can. So while we charge for any new parts (cables, brake pads, chains etc.), there is no hourly/ service rate. If you can afford to donate a bit more, this helps pay for other folks who come into the workshop and might not be able to. All proceeds from the public sessions go directly back into the running costs of the space – keeping us in parts and biscuits and generally keep Hastings Bike Project going.

While we aim to run these sessions every week, this is subject to volunteer availability – if we don’t have the minimum number of volunteers to run a session, the workshop will be closed. We also tend to run fewer sessions during the winter months.

If you’ve been to one of our public sessions and caught [the] bike bug, have a bit of bike tinkering experience already or are keen to be involved in other ways, read on...

 

We run our ‘closed’ sessions once a week, which are for volunteers only. This is the time that we fix up donated bikes, train up new volunteers, hatch plans to take over the world by bicycle, and other workshop related tasks. We ask that all prospective volunteers take the time to read and understand our volunteer agreement. This outlines what our expectations are for volunteers - minimum time contribution, our ethics and values, as well as our safeguarding/ health and safety documents.

 

If you’d like to learn more about what we do or are thinking about volunteering – come and see us! We believe in the power of face-to-face human interaction and since 2025 we are primarily offline-first. While we do have an online presence – our website being one of them, our social media accounts are no longer actively maintained and serve only as an archive for some of our previous work. Our email account is used strictly for back-office purposes and will be rarely monitored for correspondence – but we can be reached at ‘hastingsbikeproject at proton dot me’.

(Please note that all of our previous gmail addresses are now defunct. Blame google)