The Team

We are FUrad, an open team of over 20 students, employees and external people who came together through their shared interest in repairing bicycles on a voluntary basis. In our workshop at Fabeckstraße 30, we usually hold open shifts twice a week, in which we support visitors in repairing their bikes themselves and learn together with them. It is particularly important to us to offer the workshop as an alternative to commercial bicycle repair shops and thus create low-threshold access to sustainable mobility that is affordable for all status groups.

Paulina Bienioschek, Andreas Diefenbach, Emma Stingele and Anselm Denfeld, as well as many other motivated mechanics from the initiative, are working to implement the project this year.

About the Idea

As part of the FUturist call for proposals, the FUrad repair shop is to be further developed together in order to promote sustainable, healthy and solidarity-based mobility in future semesters:

Through material donations from visitors and, above all, by dismantling old bicycles and storing the usable parts (tubes, tires, cranks, pedals, handlebars, gears, brakes, bells, lights, wheels, etc.), we can already provide resource-saving and inexpensive repair parts. In order to be able to cover the bicycles of all visitors, we need a wide range of used bicycle parts from the last 50 years and the necessary storage capacity. We would therefore like to set up a long-term fund for used bicycle parts so that any bicycle repairs can be carried out directly on the FU campus in a resource-saving, local, self-determined and cost-effective manner. Specifically, our workshop is to be upgraded with heavy-duty shelving and ceiling hanging systems for this pool in order to make optimum use of the limited space and organize the used spare parts in the best possible way. The resulting further reduction in the purchase of new spare parts should also lead to FUrad being seen as a place of learning for conscious consumption and resource-saving repairs.

We are also focusing on making bicycle repairs possible outside our workshop: A mobile tool station is to be equipped with another set of tools, which will make outdoor repairs possible and/or can also be used at other FU locations. The tool station and advertising material are intended to increase the physical presence of the initiative and make the FUrad offer even more accessible and user-friendly. In this way, we want to further establish FUrad as a place of exchange about bicycles and sustainable development - both on campus and beyond.

Outlook

We are looking forward to being able to implement larger projects such as the spare parts pool and the mobile tool station through the funding project. We would like to contribute to sustainable (bicycle) mobility at the FU with the joint further development of FUrad.

Contact

furadfu@gmail.com