Hey ya’ll,
So I have to admit something…I’ve shown these photos on our facebook page already. So if you “like” us on Facebook you’ve already seen these photos. But not everyone uses facebook so I will now unveil our new Back Alley Bikes Workshop!
Looks really pretty doesn’t it? You see, every Saturday when we have our youth come in to our Youth Earn-a-Bike program I assign the kids to a different bench. Previously we had colored electrical tape around each set of tools. There was a red bench with red taped tools, a blue bench, a green bench and so on.
Every time I would say, “You are working at the blue bench” I would get a blank stare that said, “What are you talking about?” Last week I realized that we had a bunch of paint sitting around…so I painted the benches. Now I understand there are folks in the world that are color blind but besides that issue, I think it is now much more clear which bench is which. After the pilot week last Saturday it seems as if the kids like the benches this way. Or at least it is much easier to tell which bench to go to.
Also, it has added a lot of color to an otherwise black and white world that our workshop previously was.
Speaking of Black and White, that doesn’t have to always be a bad thing. Last December we had four folks join our collective here at Back Alley Bikes. As a team building exercise type thing we put a few drawings on the wall of the Back Alley Bikes space. In other words, our family grew so we had a work party that involved graffiti. It all depends on how you want to word that.
The idea was that folks all learn in different ways. Some use visuals, some use spoken instruction…the more methods you use, the better learning can happen right? So we added some visuals. Check it out…
We also used our party time together to glue our kids drawings to the walls in the stairwell.
The next photo I’m gonna post is a mixture of drawings. The one in the center is an exploded view of a three piece bottom bracket. The surrounding drawings were all completed in September by one of our volunteers Brain Lacey.
Brian is a student at the College for Creative Studies here in Detroit and emailed us one day saying, “Is there anyway I can help out?” I immediately thought of all the other things I wanted drawn on our walls that the collective wasn’t able to finish during our party. So Brian came in for two long days and put a bunch of drawings on our walls. Here are some more photos of that…
So sorry it took me so long to give you a sneak peek of the Back Alley Bikes workshop. But we are always improving. To remind myself of this I have to look back at other photos I’ve taken. Here is a photo of the workshop in 2011. The workbenches we currently have didn’t exist until April of 2011. In the photo you can see that we didn’t even have all the tools to fill each bench.
So a year and a half later we’ve come a long way. Sometimes progress takes time, but is so totally worth it! Lets keep going back in time. Here is a photo from the 2010 workshop…
Rewind a little farther to 2006….
Then back to 2004…
and finally, here is a photo of some of the original mural painting going up in Back Alley Bikes in 2004…
