Organizing a ride

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We suggest people take on the following tasks for organizing a successful World Naked Bike Ride:

Requirements

All rides listed here must commit to the following:

• The general message of WNBR is a protest against oil dependency and body shame. WNBR advocates and celebrates sustainable energy, environmentally-responsible living, human-powered transport and body-positive values. No ride should seriously deviate from this general message.
• Rides must not impose that participants wear a minimum amount of clothing on the ride.
• Take promotion of the ride seriously. Organizers should work together with like-minded individuals and groups (such as Critical Mass) to make a successful event. Organizers must distribute flyers and work with grassroots media and press to generate interest.
• Provide basic information for publicizing the event on the web including a start time and location.
• Provide regular updates to the wiki page for your local ride. Include ride reports after your event has passed and provide a summary and link to your ride report on the past events page.

Registering a new ride

Potential Ride organizers must choose from one of the following:

• Select from an existing WNBR event using the form on the main page of the World Naked Bike Ride website, and indicate that you want to help organize and/or promote the event.
• Suggest a new ride (using the form) by selecting "nominate city" and filling in:
  • Name of proposed city
  • Organizer's name
  • Organizer's email address
  • Ticks in the Participate, Volunteer and Receive email boxes

Adding your ride location to the main site and wiki

Once registered the good folk at World Naked Bike Ride should add your new ride location to the list on the main site. Please check with them that this has been done.

As a local ride organiser, you will be responsible for updating information on this wiki site, or delegating someone to do this. Please check that your ride information is up to date on the List of rides page.

Promotion

Note: WNBR is a family-friendly event. While WNBR does allow children to participate (and they have participated in some rides), WNBR has a policy of not allowing promoters to directly recruit children to participate in our events. Children who are interested in participating should speak with their parents or legal guardians.

Word of mouth

• Tell your friends, co-workers and family. Those closest to you are often the most likely people to provide support.

Flyers and posters

• Design a quarter-page promotional flyer. This has always been the most important component in the success of our past naked bike rides. See examples on the Posters page.
• Distribute flyers. In the past we have distributed about 3,000 flyers per event. For larger cities, we suggest distributing about 5,000 flyers. Smaller bicycle frame flyers also work very well.

Endorsements and advertising

WNBR encourages collaboration within the contexts of cycling advocacy, environmental sustainability or body-positive living (in non-sexualized contexts). We encourage coordinators and riders alike to seek endorsements from these groups, which can be added to the endorsements list.

We strongly recommend finding any local Critical Mass groups near you to network with and get support from. Many Critical Mass groups have a great deal experience with ride promotion and can make suggestions about where to flyer and where you can find bike racks to put flyers on. Ride and work with them to work towards common goals.

Advertisements and affiliations are restricted to the above groups to keep the message of WNBR as clear and coherent as possible. As such, we do not allow affiliations, associations or advertising in any form with business or organizations that are directly or indirectly affiliated with groups that are outside the those contexts. More specifically, we do not allow direct or indirect associations overtly sexualized organizations, especially businesses. Such affiliations confuse the message of WNBR and only reinforce ill-informed stereotypes of people who participate in social nudity in public environments.

As an example, some groups have been approached by NudistsFriends.com to enter into an advertising agreement, promising funds for business referrals. This group may seem like a naturist or nudist group but are widely not accepted within the community as they affiliate with voyeuristic, swinging and sex ad businesses all of which are well outside the contexts of the message of WNBR.

Web links and advertising

• Help spread the word on the Internet using web banners. Try creating your own!
• Get as many web links as possible pointing to www.worldnakedride.org. Get it on regional event calendars.
• Use our Flash (.swf) banner ad on your site. Cut and paste this XHTML code into your web page:
  

<!-- WNBR Flash (.swf) banner ad XHTML code begin -->
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="468" height="60" title="WNBR ad">
<param name="movie" value="http://worldnakedbikeride.org/media_promo/WNBRad2005.swf" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<embed src="http://worldnakedbikeride.org/media_promo/WNBRad2005.swf" width="468" height="60" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
</object>
<!-- WNBR Flash (.swf) banner ad XHTML code end -->

Event organization

Route

• Decide on a start location.
• Draw up a route plan and finish point. You may want to confirm this with the police, to avoid the risk of people being arrested for public nudity offences.

Pre- and post-ride events

• Organize a post-ride party. This provides a good place for participants to wind down after the ride, in the company of their fellow riders. Naked cyclists love beer!
• Optional: Organize a pre-ride bodypainting party. Many naked cyclists love to get painted before riding. This can be a special event in itself and can generate a lot of interest.

Roles

See Roles page for more information

Meetings

See Meeting agenda page for more information