We have just under two weeks to go before our night of light on Saturday April 24th. Are you ready to tell Scotland’s politicians out on the campaign trail that THIS MACHINE FIGHTS CLIMATE CHANGE and THE TIME IS NOW? 

Image showing a polar bear with a bike and the caption 'this machine fights climate change

We’ve started to hear news filtering through from around Scotland about various actions that our supporters are planning to take. We’ve heard that arty card cutouts are planned for shop windows on a high street, with light shining out from within. A fairy light bike sculpture looks to be in the planning, although where it will be popping up is so far being kept under wraps. 

We’ve already seen a few light drawing practices popping up too.

Folk have also been talking a lot about projecting our graphics onto their windows from within. (We have now added reversed graphics and animations to our  Resources page to assist with this). We are even hearing that some more ambitious (and somewhat technical) plans to take larger projections outdoors are hatching.

Meanwhile, we haven’t been idle ourselves and are planning something in Edinburgh, so watch this space as all will be revealed on the night.

If you have a rough idea yourself about what you are planning to do, please let us know at press@pedalonparliament.org And be sure to send us photos or video of your action on the night, or tag us in your social media posts about it. Our hashtags for this action are #TheTimeIsNow #PoP2021 #ThisMachineFightsClimateChange #LightTheWay

If you’re still looking for inspiration, we may have some for you here or in our useful toolkit here (PDF). Remember, we are deliberately avoiding drawing a crowd this year – even as restrictions start to ease, we are extremely conscious that gatherings at this early stage are still not a good idea. And this is why we’ve tailored this year’s action around something you can do from your home or within your household/bubble. So please, no group rides, even small ones.

We hope that you can join in with us on the 24th. With Holyrood elections just around the corner, and with COP26 due in Scotland by the end of the year, it is more important than ever that we remind our politicians that we need Scotland to be a cycle-friendly country. To that end, whether you have an action planned or not, please contact your politicians to let them know that active travel is important to you. Walk, Wheel, Cycle, Vote have a brilliant candidate finder tool where you can contact all of your candidates, list and constituency, and you can also see where they stand on their three key asks (which are very much in line with our own manifesto).

We know that active travel is a key part of the solution to our climate crisis – but we need to make sure our politicians know that too. The time for action is NOW.

Counting Down: Under two weeks to go!