Pedal-powered cinema

At the end of the year the GAFI and Ape Alliance team met with James Beecher a young inventor who adapted his own bicycle and turned it into a cinema generated by pedal power. This is an exciting development for GAFI as it allows us to take the cinema everywhere we can pedal to, increasing our access to many communities where electricity is not available. All we need is the side of a house or a big sheet to project onto and we are can screen any of our 16 films to hundreds of people at a time.

GAFI and the Ape Alliance recently held two events in Bristol and Stroud launching pedal powered cinema for GAFI.

This exciting new idea has created a massive new opportunity for GAFI to access hard to reach communities with minimal resources in great ape range states. Thanks to James Beecher and his pedalpower invention GAFI will be able to screen conservation films more sustainably, at a lower cost and with far less environmental impact.

The team at GAFI would like to thank everyone who joined us at the Pedal powered events in Bristol, Stroud and Port Lympne, the money donated goes straight back into the conservation work and we have a small fund started that hopefully following more events and donations, will work towards the first bike to be delivered to Uganda. The team out in Uganda are extremely excited about this and cannot wait for us to raise the full amount and get their special bike to them.

Already the interest in pedal powered screenings is growing rapidly, we have requests for systems to go to Rwanda, DRC, Nigeria & Sumatra (and Kenya and India although they are not Great Apes range states we will do what we can to help them).
So we have quite a challenge on our hands! – Each request would involve a “pedal powered cinema”, a library of wildlife and conservation films, and a field worker to facilitate the screenings and discussions.

If you know of anyone else who would be interested to support the pedal powered cinemas through GAFI or  have a fundraising screening of their own we would love to hear about them!