Good Energy partner Magnificent Revolution is a not-for-profit education project based in London but you may well have come across them and their Pedal Sessions Stage at various festivals throughout the summer. They use bicycle power generators as educational tools in schools, colleges and communitiesimed to help people understand their energy use, its links with power production and climate change. We spoke to Project Manager Phil Moore to find out more.

Magnificent Revolution, great name. How did you come up with it? (And what’s it all about...?)
We started out as the Magnificent Revolutionary Cycling Cinema back in 2007 when we built our first bicycle-powered cinema at the Big Chill Festival. Magnificent Revolution has flourished into a multi-disciplinary education and ecology organisation with fingers (and feet) in art, film, music and design. We aim to guide people towards positive solutions and transitioning to low carbon lifestyles. By showing how many bikes it takes to power household appliances we help people to understand energy in an enjoyable and engaging way. The bicycle generators are a great way to introduce people to renewable technology and our workshops give people practical experience in putting together their own generators.

How did you hear about Good Energy?
We’ve been aware of Good Energy for a while. Their commitment to 100% renewable power is an inspiration and we try and drop their name into all of our workshops.
 
And what made you want to become an affiliate partner?
We are often told to save electricity but as you can’t see it and can’t touch it, energy remains difficult to conceptualise. We try to address this in our educational projects, turning electrical energy into something physical – as well as bringing it back to the wider issues of climate change. Good Energy share this idea of combining an awareness of where our energy comes from with educating consumers about energy consumption.

What makes you and your team get up in the morning?
Our passion for bikes, ecology and what the future holds – Magnificent Revolution work to join the dots, get people thinking about our planet and pedalling the revolution. We want to promote a positive outlook on the challenges presented by climate change. We focus on our ingenuity as a species and hope to inspire people to think about what they can do to change our world for the better.

And what keeps you awake at night?
Greed… species loss… cars honking their horns. We tend to sleep very well after a hard day’s cycling around London doing workshops. The job, as well as being creative, requires, unsurprising, a lot of energy!

If you could make sure everybody did just one thing to help tackle climate change what would it be?
There’s so much we can do as individuals to reduce our energy consumption and save money. We’re all different so we can tackle climate change in a number of ways. For some people it might be ditching their car for a bicycle, remembering to turn their lights off, or trying not to fly for a year. We try to raise awareness about renewable energy and act as an entry point for people into the issues around climate change, resource depletion and the environment.

What’s next for Magnificent Revolution?
Our major project for 2011 is the Cycle-In Cinema – a drive in cinema, but without the cars. We’re currently fundraising to help us build a new and improved 20 bicycle generator that will power a programme of free screenings in London this summer, reanimating forgotten corners of the capital and bringing back a sense of community to cinema.

We’re also working on a number of pedal powered projects with Refugee Film Festival, Good Screenings, Shambala Festival, the list goes on and on. Collaboration has always been at the heart of what we do; bringing people together to share ideas and resources. We’ll be travelling to Umea in Sweden this summer (by train) to present a project called Global Warning.

Keep an eye on magnificentrevolution.org and follow us on Twitter for more details.