Bearpit Saturdays marks the beginning of Anna Best’s one-year project, a public art commission
in tandem with the development and opening of the Cyclopark. Overall Anna’s commission will
explore a wide variety of ideas and themes around entertainment, circuses, rallies and protest,
the site, park and motorway, tattoos, accidents, scars - gathering stories to create a new narrative
which will manifest in live performances, film and a publication.

Bearpits Saturdays runs for 5 weeks in the summer creating a fleet of bikes for the townspeople
to join some mass rides mapping potential cycle routes in the town. At the same time they are
a meeting point between artist and team with local people. The process of engaging with
people and gleaning opinions and stories and is a form of socio-cultural research. The material
gathered will then be worked into the further programme, happenings and events later in the year.
The workshops offer a chance to design and make brand new bespoke bikes – “think tandem,
double-decker, trailer for two, reclining seat for one”- or to bring their own bike to do up. Located
in St.Georges Shopping Centre, the team will be providing bikes, tools and adornments, bespoke
designed flags, transfers and upholstery material.

Earlier this year, Anna organised film screenings of Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian classic The
Bicycle Thieves and Werner Herzog’s 1992 Kuwaiti oil field documentary Lessons of Darkness -
powered entirely by cyclists. They also organised a bike amnesty for the Bike Fleet workshops.
Prior to the workshops, the commission launched in April with a dramatic opening featuring
James Bentley performing his “ring of fire” on the Cyclopark’s earth works site.

Bearpit Saturdays is open to all ages and are free. For more information, see the Artlands
website: www.artlands.org.uk and www.annabest.info