Please note, panels and scheduling may be changed prior to the event

Advancing Mobility Justice, Gender Equity, Climate Action, and Sustainable Development Through Sport

Day #1: October 15th

1) Anti/colonial Possibilities of Cycling

Cycling sits at the intersection of land, movement, and power. This panel will examine how biking can both reproduce and resist settler-colonial logics by tracing community practices, historical revivals, and contemporary struggles (e.g., courier and migrant worker mobilities) to consider how cyclists contest ‘organized abandonment,’ city-marketing ‘creative class’ politics, and car-centric urbanism while imagining more just futures.

2) Prioritizing Vulnerable Road Users: Politics and Challenges

What would it take to truly put children, seniors, disabled people, pedestrians, and cyclists at the center of car-dominated systems? This panel will explore the political and narrative struggles around ‘Vision Zero’ and active transportation, highlighting advocacy strategies, equity-driven design choices, and accountability tools. Panelists will share how to move beyond performative consultations toward lasting, cross-agency safety improvements.

3) Grassroots Organizing within Capitalist Structures

In addition to advancing systemic change, grassroots groups also navigate funding precarity, institutional metrics, and care for their people. This panel will detail how bike hubs, mutual-aid logistics, and volunteer-to-leadership pipelines strengthen local mobility justice ecosystems, create youth employment pathways, and animate public space, thereby offering concrete strategies for compensation, partnerships, and scaling without losing community governance.

4) Advocacy through Participatory Research: Photovoice, Arts-Based, Digital Storytelling & GIS

This panel will showcase participatory mapping, community story archives, and visual/digital methods that translate lived experience into policy action. From feminist ‘recreation deserts’ mapping to Latin American cycling narratives that resist ‘windshield-designed cities,’ panelists detail ethical practice, co-creation with community partners, and the nuts-and-bolts of turning data and stories into planning change.

5) Film Screening & Panel: Dirt Relations

Through the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program, Dirt Relations follows trail building and riding as practices of relationship, healing, and cultural resurgence. The post-screening conversation will explore allyship, ‘recreational colonialism,’ youth leadership, and how outdoor recreation can support reciprocal land relations and community resilience.

Day #2: October 16th

6) Keynote - Carly Gilbert-Patrick, Team Leader for Active Mobility, Digitalisation and Transport Integration, United Nations Environment Programme

Walking and cycling are the most fundamental forms of mobility, affordable, accessible, and vital for both human and planetary health. Yet they remain undervalued and underinvested in transport and development agendas, particularly across Africa and the Global South. In this keynote, Carly Gilbert-Patrick, Team Leader for Active Mobility, Digitalisation and Transport Integration at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will explore how mobility justice intersects with gender, equity, climate action, and sustainable development. She will frame the discussion within the current state of the environment and the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, highlighting how active mobility offers solutions not only to the climate crisis but also to so many other urgent global challenges. Drawing links with sport, Carly will demonstrate how reclaiming streets and enabling active mobility can empower women, youth, and marginalized communities, while catalysing healthier, safer, and more sustainable futures. The keynote will include interactive moments throughout, inviting participants to connect their lived experiences with global policy frameworks and to be part of the keynote in creative and fun ways.

7) Gender Equity and Outdoor Movement for Mobility Justice

Bringing public health, urban policy, and feminist praxis into conversation, this panel will examine how gender, race, class, and safety shape access to cycling and outdoor movement. Topics include evidence on barriers/facilitators, city-community collaborations, and strategies that expand participation and leadership for women, girls, and gender-diverse people in diverse urban and regional settings.

8) Climate Action, Sport, and the Environment

Sport is both impacted by and implicated in the climate crisis. Panelists will probe the promises and pitfalls of ‘sustainability,’ assess sector footprints and policy frameworks, and offer communication tactics and governance levers for shifting from green talk to climate-just practice within elite sport, community programs, and SFD initiatives.

9) Innovative Approaches to Mobilizing Knowledge: Advancing Gender Equity & Health Rights through Movement

How do we move research into movements? This session will highlight creative, community-engaged knowledge mobilization, embedding gender equity and health rights in programs, curricula, and campaigns; co-producing tools with practitioners; and designing participatory evaluations that help organizations learn, iterate, and influence decision-makers.

10) Film Screening & Panel: Changing Gears

Spanning Canada, Nicaragua, and Uganda, Changing Gears centers organizations using bicycles to build safer, fairer, and more sustainable communities. The discussion will put grassroots leadership, livelihood and youth pathways, and decolonial gender perspectives in dialogue translating on-the-ground lessons into policy and program opportunities.

Day #3: October 17th

11) E-Bikes: Policy Considerations and Environmental Costs

E-bikes expand access, carrying capacity, and trip range, but raise questions about infrastructure, safety, affordability, and end-of-life waste. Panelists consider classification and enforcement, batteries and circularity, equity in incentive design, and corridor planning to integrate e-mobility into broader active transportation systems.

12) Climate Action and Leisure: Grassroots Perspectives

Community sport actors face capacity gaps even as climate impacts intensify. This discussion surfaces practical training models, e-learning and cohort programs, and locally tailored toolkits that enable small clubs and SFD groups to assess risks, cut emissions, and center justice while sustaining participation and care.

13) Health, Equity, and Safety in the Built Environment

Urban design decisions shape who can move, where, and at what cost. Speakers will connect planning choices to health outcomes and inequities, sharing evidence from Global South and North cities, lessons from safety investments, and intersectoral approaches (public health-planning-community) to deliver low-stress networks and safer access to destinations.

14) Exploring Climate Justice and Sport (for Development)

Bridging critical scholarship and field practice, this panel will interrogate how sport for development (SFD) can confront (rather than reproduce) extractive logics. Topics include climate justice frameworks for SFD, environmental communication principles, and governance tensions, plus examples of policy/practice shifts that embed ecological care, local knowledge, and accountability.

15) Interactive Workshop & Policy Briefs Launch: Shaping the Future

In this hands-on closing session, we will synthesize cross-panel insights into actionable next steps. Participants will co-develop priorities for policy, programming, and research; identify partnerships and resourcing pathways; and launch concise policy briefs to support advocacy grounded in joy, care, and collective responsibility.