What is the research?

The project is titled Infrastructures of Care and Neglect: TNBI experiences of cycling in Brighton & Hove. It seeks to gain greater understanding of TNBI people’s experiences of cycling by holding group discussions of our experiences, what we’d like to see changed, and making a zine. We are interested in cycling for any means of travel, commuting, and leisure (just not competitive cycling as a sport, sorry!). The project is led by Matt (they/them) at the University of Brighton working with Beck Cedar (they/them) at The Clare Project and zine-maker and cycling enthusiast Lea Cooper (they/them). It is funded by a University of Brighton R&KE Development Fund award and received approval from a cross-school Tier 2 ethics committee.

The research is made-up of three types of in-person group-based activities and you can express interest in participating in each type or all 3. To maximise the amount of people who can take part you can only participate in one of the group discussions and zine-making workshops, so please indicate your preferred date for these:

  1. Group discussions to understand our experiences of cycling as TNBI individuals and collectively.
    • Thursday 8th May 2-4pm at Community Base, Brighton.
      OR
    • Saturday 7th June 11am-1pm at Community Base, Brighton.
  2. Zine-making workshops with Lea Cooper. We will make a digital zine about the project. If you wish to make a contribution to the zine then this workshop will provide guidance and support on how to do this. For further info and FAQs from Lea Cooper at the bottom of this page.
    • Saturday 17th May 11am-1pm at Community Base, Brighton.
      OR
    • Tuesday 20th May 2-4pm at The Queery, Brighton.
  3. An Active Travel Policy discussion. This group discussion will be attended by a member of staff from Brighton & Hove City Council and seek to understand what could be done to improve the uptake and experience of cycling amongst trans* individuals.
    • Date: June TBC and location TBC either Community Base or University of Brighton city centre campus.

Who can participate in the research?

You can participate in the research if you are all of the following:

  • Aged 18 and above;
  • live in Brighton & Hove or the surrounding area;
  • self-identify as TNBI (this includes but is not limited to transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, intersex and people with variations in sex characteristics);
  • and have cycled, currently cycle, or have faced barriers to cycling and wish to share your experiences.

We welcome and seek to support participation of individuals who are often underrepresented in research. In particular those who are working class and/or on low income, from a minoritized race and/or ethnicity, and those with a disability. We welcome all type of cycles be it adapted cycles, hand cycles, e-bikes, tandems, recumbents, wheelchair cycles, tricycles, and bicycles.

Interested in participating in the research?

If you are interested in participating then please follow these 3 steps:

  1. Read the Participant Info Sheet for more details on the project, what’s involved, and data confidentiality etc.
  2. Register your interest to participate in particular group discussions and/or zine-making workshops by emailing Beck Cedar at The Clare Project at beck@clareproject.org.uk.
    Please send Beck the following details:
    • Your name and pronouns.
    • Any relevant access needs we should be aware of.
    • State the group discussion and zine-making workshop dates you are interested in attending. The dates and times of these are listed above.
    • Your preferred contact details (either phone number or email).
    • A brief overview of why you are interested in participating in the research (Optional and 100 words max).
  2. We will confirm your place in the group session/s you expressed interest in via email or phone depending on your preference. Spaces are limited.

If you have any questions regarding the research please email Beck from The Clare Project at beck@clareproject.org.uk.

Zine-making Info

FAQs

“But I’ve never made a zine before!”

Don’t worry if you’ve never made a zine before – you’ll be guided through a series of activities to warm up and get creative. We’ll be reading a bunch of zines at the start for inspiration, before learning how to fold some 1-sheet zines together, and then exploring what you might want to contribute to a compilation zine about TNBI experiences of cycling.

“But I don’t know what I want to say!”

You don’t need to know how being TNBI relates to your experiences of cycling, you just need to be curious about exploring this creatively with others!

“But I’m not creative!”

Zines can contain anything – they don’t have to be beautiful drawings or lots of writing – they can be playlists, screenshots from your notes app, doodles, scribbles, photos from your phone or collages. The workshop will be a low-pressure environment to play around and explore.

“But I’m not sure I can make a whole zine page!”

You can contribute what you want to a compilation zine at the end – a fully formed page, a piece of writing, a photograph or drawing, or nothing at all!

What we’ll do in this workshop:

We’ll start by reading some zines together as a way to figure out what zines are, ways that other people have used them, and why we are making them in this project. There’ll be the chance to share any previous experience you have making or reading zines. We’ll then warm up our zine-making muscles by folding and filling some 1-page minizines. We’ll spend the second half of the workshop considering our individual contributions to a collaborative zine about trans and non-binary experiences of cycling in Brighton – we’ll start making our pages, talk about what information we might want to include alongside them (names and titles, alt-text or descriptions of images) and what will happen with the finished zine. You might finish your page(s) during the workshop, or you might want to take them to finish at home. You can change your mind about contributing zine pages at any point, up until we produce and print the zine!

What’s a zine?

Zines are DIY publications. They might take the familiar shape of magazines, booklets, or pamphlets, or might be a more unusual shape like a map or a poster. What is distinctive about zines is the way they are DIY. They value the handmade, the amateur, doing things for yourself or together with people you know. Zines have many different histories and sit in a wider landscape of self-publishing as a radical, creative or personal act. Whilst the word zine is often identified as coming from science fiction fanzines in the 1930s, we can trace the histories of zines themselves through the Harlem renaissance, Riot Grrl and Queercore punk culture, the Black Panthers, Victorian women’s scrapbooks and political pamphlets of the 1700s. We can also locate them in a wider global context, for example alongside the Little Magazines movement in India. Zines are full of multiplicity, of diverse voices, stories and histories, and so it’s important that we hold on to their multiple radical lineages instead of looking for a single zine origin story.

For more on what a zine is see: https://zinejam.com/blog-1/zines-101

About the facilitator:

Lea Cooper is an artist, researcher and DIY cultural organiser based in Kirkcaldy, Fife. They’ve made zines since 2016, co-founded the Edinburgh Zine Library, and were an organiser at Edinburgh Zine Festival from 2022-2024. In 2024 they completed a PhD working with Wellcome Collection’s zines around health, illness and disability. They have since curated an exhibition based on this research, ‘Zines Forever! DIY Publications and Disability Justice’, open at Wellcome Collection in London until 14 September 2025. When they aren’t talking about zines, they are often talking or writing about their experiences as a queer and disabled cyclist, including in their book Gears for Queers, authored with their partner Abi, about their first cycle tour, which was published in June 2020. Find them at www.zinejam.com or on Instagram at @zine_jam.