Reframing MTB: Shifting Gears for a Sustainable Future

This piece first appeared in the April edition of BikeBiz magazine – not subscribed? Get a free subscription to BikeBiz.

By Rebecca Bland

Photos by Pete Scullion

This year, the annual Reframing MTB conference moved to Bristol, bringing together industry peers to tackle inclusivity and sustainability. We speak to organiser Dr Fiona Spotswood about the event and driving change within the cycling ecosystem.

For the last two years, members of the mountain biking industry and community have gathered in Sheffield to discuss, broadly, how we can develop the sport we love in a sustainable and inclusive way. This year, it relocated to Bristol, with the team of Ride Bristol co-hosting and providing another excellent conference filled with plentiful ideas and important conversations between different parts of the industry. 

We spoke to Dr Fiona Spotswood, Associate Professor in Marketing and Consumption at the University of Bristol, and part of the organisational team for this year’s Reframing MTB conference, about how the event went and what the rest of the industry can take away from it. 

One thing that really stood out about this year’s event – admittedly, the first one I have attended – was that it is such a vital part of the MTB calendar. There were over 100 people from different backgrounds, from trail builders, media, brands, land owners, and more, all gathered to tackle some tough conversations around the future of our sport. 

The event focused on three main themes that were discussed throughout the day: creating mountain bike environments that appeal to more people, working towards a stronger mountain bike sector and promoting sustainable mountain biking.

While they might seem quite vast topics, speakers were invited to present talks around these areas, and then attendees took part in workshop discussions.

“It’s a really difficult decision identifying the topics,” added Spotswood. “Because we knew that we couldn’t have endless speakers representing every issue and every topic that’s important to us as a community. But we did want speakers who could provoke some thoughts and pose some interesting questions.”

Within the workshop sections, attendees were divided into carefully selected groups and given a facilitator to keep discussions on track. It’s through the facilitator that notes were taken, and will help to compile part of the post-event report. 

From an organisational side, it was certainly a success. But how useful is having these sorts of conversations to the wider industry? And how can we take the learnings from these conferences and apply them to actually help to make a difference?

“When you go to reframing, it’s like it’s an opportunity to step outside the daily, institutional, economic dynamics that we all have to pay heed to,” continued Spotswood. “And you really get to grips with things that everybody’s thinking.”

“The first time I went to Reframing, I thought I was the only person in the world who cared about these different issues, and suddenly you’re there with like-minded people, and everybody’s come at it from a slightly different angle.”

From a strictly media and marketing perspective, it was particularly interesting to gauge public perception towards the general image portrayed across both. While tech and gnar and high-end bikes certainly serve a purpose, the fact is that most of us are more casual riders, and we don’t book trips to Morzine every weekend. And that is something that the media and brand marketing are currently missing out on, according to Spotswood.

“You can expand your customer base, whether you’re a brand, marketing in the media, or whether it’s editorial media. You can expand your customer base if you understand how to do that. It takes investment and it takes effort, but you can.

“And it’s also a matter of social justice. There are so many enormous benefits to mountain biking – I wrote recently that mountain biking is like the perfect antidote to modern life, because it’s not screen-based. It’s all about social cohesion, nature connectedness, physical activity and mental relief. 

“There are so many benefits to it, and yet we put these massive walls up around it, and we say, ‘Get off my land. Get off my patch. It’s only for these certain people who look a certain way, can talk a certain talk and understand these rules.” 

Whether you’ve felt marginalised or unwelcome in mountain biking or not, it’s hard to deny that, as someone on the outside of the industry looking in, it could be seen as off-putting to some societal groups. But, we can make a difference in this perception, as Spotswood explained. 

“Sport has this potential to drive social change. What we see in sport changes how society works. If we see women commentating on Premier League football, it changes how we see women in society. If we see sports brands taking responsibility for the carbon footprint or some kind of sustainability metric, then that drives how we as consumers think about sustainability in our sport.”

So, how does she suggest we, as an industry, begin this wave of change? By considering the sector as an “ecosystem.”

“If say, we as a brand, decide to do something different or progressive, we’re not going to change the world overnight,” she continued. “It’s slow progress. But by thinking about the mountain biking industry as an ecosystem, it gives you power, because you think ‘I can do a small thing, and it matters, because if I can do a small thing, everybody can do a small thing.’ 

“It works on the flip side as well. It’s lots of different touch points, lots of different assumptions, multiple different decisions. I think thinking about it as an ecosystem helps us understand what we can do, and it also helps us understand the interrelated nature of the problem.”

Sustainability was one of the topics touched on in this year’s conference and is often a talking point in the industry as brands aim to go carbon-neutral and focus on greener policies.

And if mountain biking overall was almost ‘reframed’ to showcase more about how it can help us to connect with nature and protect our trails, it would certainly help to highlight these issues more and encourage more conversation outside of the one event a year where it’s a main topic of discussion. 

Another big area of discussion was around gender inequality and encouraging inclusiveness in the sport. We’ve all heard stories or had experiences of women being put in awkward positions by parts of the industry, whether that be in a shop or an online forum. But understanding that in itself, it’s not the fault of the 16-year-old sales assistant, or Gary from Slough on his laptop, it’s about collective responsibility, and that we all need to call out behaviour and attitudes that no longer serve the community. 

“If we have a stubborn gender inequality amongst participants, or we have a predominantly white participation community, that is not the fault of a 16-year-old retail assistant working in a local shop who happens to be a bloke and struggles to communicate effectively with a middle-aged woman. 

“It’s not his fault that he’s putting women in a box. It’s not one magazine’s fault or one journalist’s or one editor’s fault. It’s about a sense of collective responsibility, and that we need to shift it bit by bit.”

Trying to change the perceptions of an industry and community that’s been going for decades quite comfortably on the popularity of adrenaline and technology to something that can also accept riders who are quite happy sticking with bridleways and blue trails might seem like a daunting task. 

But it can certainly be done, and in doing so, brands, media and the like could see a wider audience interested in their content, their products etc. 

“Reframing MTB is the starting point that shows that it can be done, that it’s possible and it’s important, but we need to then interrogate our corner of the ecosystem and then figure out what levers we can pull.”