S4 - Episode 6 - Bike Works CIC

In this episode, Simon and Murphy speak to Zoe Portlock - Co-founder of Bikework CIC. This is grand finale of Season 4 of This Much We Know is focussed upon women led social enterprises.

About Bikeworks  

Bikeworks believe everyone should have access to cycling to increase physical activity, wellbeing, and connectivity, with environmental impact interwoven throughout.

Bikeworks was established as a social enterprise back in 2006 in the heart of London’s east end. 

Founding partners Zoe Portlock and Jim Blakemore created the original vision for Bikeworks, inspired by London winning the bid to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, seeing this as a chance to seize the opportunity for excluded people and the wider community.

Over the years Bikeworks continues to prove itself an agile and responsive organisation, evolving its social business model in response to the needs of our beneficiaries, achieving more impact year-on-year, actively collaborating with other partners and stakeholders to achieve this. 

Having started life in the living room of the founding partners, moving from location-to-location over the years, including warehouses to shop fronts, by 2018 Bikeworks had reduced the number of its physical locations across London to move towards a more flexible mobile outreach model.

Significantly this marked a key milestone in our journey so far, when Bikeworks moved into its new home in the Lee Valley VeloPark on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park realising the vision contained within the original Bikeworks business plan, titled “Olympic Bikes”. 

Find out more about Bikeworks: 

https://www.bikeworks.org.uk/

Follow them on Twitter

Connect with Zoe here on LinkedIn 

About This Much We Know 

This Much We Know is a podcast from Homeless Link looking at the role of social enterprise in the homeless sector, with guest experienced social entrepreneurs and funders sharing their experiences, successes and their failures. 

Funded by Access, hosted by Murphy Hopkins-Hubbard, Enterprise and Investment Manager at Homeless link and Simon Pickering, Associate at Homeless Link.