Every month we shine a light on a different Youth Music Initiative activity to celebrate all the different kinds of work funded through this important Scottish Government-supported initiative. In this month's Spotlight we're taking inspiration from the City of Edinburgh Council, whose new methods for transporting their musical instruments around the city has heads turning!
City of Edinburgh Council have set an ambitious target for Edinburgh to become a net zero city by 2030. This means that by 2030, CEC want remove the same amount of greenhouse gases that Edinburgh puts into the air.
Youth Music Initiative - Cargo Bike Movement. Image courtesy of City of Edinburgh Council.
The 2030 target recognises the need for Edinburgh to play its part in helping to deliver on national goals to reduce emission. And that cities will need to make faster progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions if Scotland is to meet its national 2045 net zero target.
The Youth Music Initiative (YMI) has been taking ambitious steps to reduce its carbon footprint, using electric cargo-bikes to deliver ukuleles to schools across Edinburgh. Supported by Creative Scotland, YMI delivers music lessons to 22,000 primary school aged children per year.
To date, the most efficient way to transport instruments several times a year between schools has been by taxi, but over the past year the YMI Team have trialled the delivery of musical resources and ukuleles via electric cargo bicycles, in a bid to reduce the carbon footprint and support Edinburgh’s net zero future.
An example of colleagues leading change, YMI tutor Malcolm Goodare saw the opportunity on Council’s ‘News Beat’ newsletter to try a cargo bike for work and raised it at a YMI team meeting.
During the trial, ukuleles were moved 35 miles between 10 schools by 3 members of the team. Using cargo-bikes instead of taxis, the team saved a total of 0.01 tonnes of CO2e.
Furthermore, ukulele deliveries to primary schools provoked excitement and discussion amongst learners.
One delighted Primary 4 commented, "so it’s a bit like a pizza delivery but for ukuleles!."
Hopefully this climate action will encourage young people to inspire each other to take their own small steps towards net zero.
In conversation with YMI Tutor, Malcolm Goodare
What prompted you to try this new way of transporting ukuleles?
I saw the opportunity on CEC’s employee newsletter: ‘News Beat’ to try a cargo bike for work. We regularly transport sets of 30-60 ukuleles around the city by car and taxi; a cargo bike would be the perfect size for our needs. A chance to try one would be a new experience, and would allow us to transport the ukuleles school-to-school with no emissions!
How easy was it?
All cargo bikes are electric, which made hills, wind and heavy loads no problem at all! I had a great time breezing along Edinburgh’s path network. Tom and Jamie from the Cargo Bike Movement were great at showing me how the bike worked and making sure I was feeling confident before heading out.
I was surprised at how easy it was to get through gaps and tight corners - although the bike is long with an absolutely huge box attached, it is no wider than a regular bike.
The cargo box on bikes are lockable, which meant I could go in and out of schools without having to worry.
Did the bike start any conversations?
I told one of my Primary 4 YMI ukulele classes about the cargo bike, and showed them it on my way out of the school. Their teacher asked: “who wants one of these?”, to which there was an enthusiastic response of “me! me! me!” One comment was “so it’s a bit like a pizza delivery but for ukuleles!”
Were there any tricky bits to the journey?
Locking the bike up in tight spaces took a bit more thought than a regular bike, but there were no issues with normal bike racks. At one point a truck was completely blocking a narrow street and I had to go onto the pavement. Taking the fully loaded bike up onto a kerb was a bit of a challenge, although the electric “walk assist” feature on the bike helped.
What do you think need we need to carry this forward to create a more sustainable vision for Edinburgh’s YMI team?
I collected the bike from Cargo Bike Movement at Tollcross, Edinburgh, which meant a bit of extra journey to begin with. I hope this idea takes off with more pickup locations to make it more convenient wherever you are starting your journey from!
If local authorities had a pool of bookable bikes for colleagues to use, or even a large-scale public bike sharing scheme would be great, if it could be used for work activities, such as transporting ukuleles!
I try to choose traffic-free routes, and this particular journey was 88% cycle path and quiet streets according to my journey planner. However, this is not always possible, so the current trend of increased traffic-free options for cycling will hopefully make cycling safer and more desirable for people.
Youth Music Initiative - Cargo Bike Movement. Image courtesy of City of Edinburgh Council.
Next steps
Following a successful trial, we plan to extend the use of Cargo-bikes to deliver our YMI resources across the CEC. We will do this through further building upon our partnership with the Cargo Bike Movement, whose support has been invaluable so far.
We will also encourage more cargo bike volunteers to be trained within the ‘Wider Achievement & Life-Long Learning’ team to assist the YMI team with deliveries. We will also continue to calculate and monitor our carbon savings throughout next year.
- More pick up and drop off locations for bikes
- The small, choices we make every day, can lead to big reductions in emissions.
- We all need to be willing to change the way we do things and work together in new ways to help Edinburgh become a net zero, climate ready city by 2030