London Cycling Festival
Across the world, capital cities regularly close off their streets to motor traffic, to create safe spaces for people to cycle, walk, jog, rollerblade, and generally have fun. This often happens on Sunday mornings – when there’s the least traffic to be disrupted – and the days are known variously as Sunday Streets, Summer Streets, Ciclovía (which translates as Cycleway), or Open Streets.
The movement began in Bogotá in 1974, where it now happens every Sunday, with over 100km of streets closed to motor traffic, and where an incredible 2 million people get out and about on their bikes. Most people in the city now say they learned to ride at the events. Similar schemes can be found in cities as varied as Los Angeles, Tucson, New York City and Paris. Mexico City has the Paseo Dominical, part of their Muévete en Bici programme (Get on Your Bike), and I was recently lucky enough to join in. It’s an utterly joyous experience, with over 60km of roads closed to motor traffic for three Sunday mornings every month, and where over a hundred thousand people regularly participate.
London previously had the FreeCycle portion of the Ride London event – a seven mile traffic-free route in the centre of the city. It was just a single day in the year, and the event was cancelled for 2025. London Cycling Campaign decided to step in to fill that gap, and set up the London Cycling Festival in 2025– a series of cycling events, closed streets and led-rides hosted across mulitple London boroughs, in partnership with Lime Bikes and Voi, with additional organisation by the Zero Emissions Network.
I designed the overall identity for the festival, including banners, posters, flyers, stickers and social media assets.
