Trust Art

project overview

Imagine creating an affordable product within a sustainable industry that is tailored to meet urgent demand and that utilizes native materials. This is exactly what the Bamboo Bike Project is currently doing in Kumasi, Ghana. The project has successfully designed the bamboo bike to be suitable for road conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, while also establishing a production system that is predominantly supported by local labor and materials. The Bamboo Bike Project is now moving into its next exciting phase as Africa’s first-ever Bamboo Bike Project facility initiates a production run!

With the help of the Millennium Cities Initiative of Columbia University's Earth Institute, bamboo bikes have gained the attention of investors and prospective buyers. The presence of the project in Kumasi, Ghana came about when a local investor native to the area approached the Bamboo Bike Project team and voiced his interest in establishing a bamboo bike production facility. This committed investor has since leased a production facility in Kumasi and made arrangements to harvest local bamboo.

To support the launch of the bikes in Ghana, Trust Art is commissioning a collaborative filmmaking initiative between young filmmakers in Ghana and the US to produce a television commercial that will present bamboo bikes to a Ghanian audience. The success of this project will be measured by how well it affects customer perception of the bikes in Ghana.

For Chapter 1 of this project, a Ghanian filmmaker captures footage of the launch of the first ever Bamboo Bicycle factory in Africa.

In Chapter 2, a Ghanian-American rapper will score the footage in Brooklyn.

Chapter 3 will include delivering the final cut of the Bamboo Bike commercial to key influential players in Ghana including the Minister of Communications, various television news outlets, and the local chiefs.

For more information about this exciting progress, please visit: http://bamboobike.org and http://mci.ei.columbia.edu/?id=bamboo_bikes