An update from Grow Cycling (and Win Ellen Noble’s Gravel Bike) – Pinkbike

Hi! I am Eliot Apparently I’m old so I should tell you who I am first. I realized that during Sea Otter when someone said they wondered why Santa Cruz sponsored a commenter until they saw me on Bernard Kerr’s Youtube channel and realized I’m “a pretty good bike rider too”. Many Thanks.

Anyway, I’m Eliot Jackson. I spent a few years traveling the world on my bike. I’m really proud of my career. I’ve done some top 20’s and top 10’s at a world championships, some podiums at Crankworx, made some cool videos etc. After I stopped going really fast on my bike ~3 years ago I started talking about people who drive really fast on Red Bull TV. I absolutely love it and working with the Red Bull crew and Rob Warner has been one of the most fulfilling, fun and hilarious things I’ve ever done.

What is the Grow Cycling Foundation?

The Grow Cycling Foundation was established over two years ago to provide underserved communities with opportunities to experience all that cycling has to offer. Cycling has given me a life I never dreamed of and I want more people to have the opportunity to pursue what I have and so much more. So much has changed in the world since we started, including me. We’ve come further than I could have ever imagined and I want to give you an update on everything we’ve accomplished so far.

I like to refer to us as an infrastructure company. There are amazing people doing extraordinary things on the consciousness side, but when you hop on a bike, where do you ride, who do you ride with, and how do you connect with people? We build things to solve these problems and we start in Los Angeles, CA. Specifically, we begin in the diverse community of Inglewood. A place where there are very few bike lanes and 0% of children ride bikes to school. However, they have a state-of-the-art stadium where they hosted the Super Bowl.

I’m not going to go into all the strategy stuff, but we believe the two biggest levers we have are proximity and community. If access requires you to travel too far (paths, roads, etc.) it will never become accessible, and if you don’t have an ecosystem around that access it will never become relevant.

Our solution manifests itself in Inglewood as entry point, access pointand aspiration.

Entry Point: Inglewood Elementary Schools

If cycling is not culturally relevant in your community, how are you introduced to it? We think the best way is through schools. It helps with safety, friendship, parental involvement, fairness, and more. Our goal is to offer cycling programs in every class of the school in the Inglewood Unified School District. This means that we are in direct contact with almost 10,000 children.

We’ve partnered with great organizations like All Kids Bike and Outride to create our programs. Educators are overlooked, overworked and underappreciated. The key was to get the teachers excited.

Access Point: Inglewood Pumptrack

Introduction to the bike is only part of the equation. The second part is a safe neighborhood area where people can ride with their community. We knew it had to be in a public park, and we knew it had to be of extremely high quality. The park is important because you want transportation infrastructure around it, and you need full-time maintenance and built-in safety components. You want it to be beautiful because you need to change the perception of what a bike is and show that cycling can be challenging, not just for transportation or as a kid’s toy.

We commissioned Velosolutions to build the most beautiful pump track we can imagine. We want this to be our fun and ambitious outdoor sports center. We also want to promote athletes, build a community, host events and so many more things you’ve been waiting for.

Once you’ve ridden a bike, where do you take it? If riding is aspirational, what do you want to be or do? We think it’s important for kids to know that you can be an Olympian on a bike, that you can be an artist or an engineer on a bike, and that you can also just hang out with friends on a Sunday afternoon on a bike . We took two steps here: our job fair and an event with Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Tourism Whistler and Crankworx.

The Whistler event was exceptional. We invited four women of color who are leaders in their communities to Crankworx. They hadn’t been to Whistler and I was trying to provide the most incredible experience I could imagine. VIP slopestyle tickets, Sushi Village on Saturday nights, dinners with industry insiders and athletes and lots of fun riding.

The purpose was fourfold:
• Provide feedback on new riding experiences to Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Tourism Whistler and Crankworx
• Gather diverse feedback that we can take back to LA
• Create an experience so magical they’ll share it with their communities back home
• Create a video highlighting her trip to Whistler to connect with other women/POCs/new riders. (Look out for it soon!)

This is just the tip of the iceberg and we are so excited to see what we can achieve over the next two years! Thank you for all your support, encouragement and well wishes.

Progress:
Thousands of job postings per month, partnerships with several outdoor industry companies and universities, Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Tourism Whistler and Crankworx Experience.

Ellen Noble Bike Giveaway

Now that you know who we are and what we do, I should also tell you that Ellen Noble is giving away her bike to raise funds for us. It’s an absolutely beautiful bike and you should definitely try to win it by clicking here! 100% of the money goes to our initiatives.