WESTMINSTER WHEELS MECHANIC SINCE 2023
I trained at Westminster Wheels since September 2023. I was studying music at university and graduated last summer, so I had a few months of… not having very much to do! I was getting really fed up with academia at the end of university, so I knew I needed something different and to see something else.
I had a bike, which I really liked, and I used to fix it myself when I could. And I always enjoyed that. I live nearby so… Lots of wins!
Day one was at the hub in Brixton, for an introduction to the City and Guilds training centre. It was fun to get to know the people. The longer that we spent together: the closer we got. I really miss my group now – really good fun!
Transferring to the workshop was quite nice: seeing everything in real life… Things that didn’t actually work or weird bikes! When you’re doing your first six-month training; you do loads of stuff refurbishing the bikes downstairs, so if anything goes wrong (if you break something!) it doesn’t matter as much, because it’s not on someone’s bike!
There were often times where it would be five of us with different scaffolding poles trying to undo seat posts or headsets or anything like that. So, it was quite funny!
At the end of my six months, I got asked to stay on: I’m happy to be staying on at Westminster Wheels as a parttime Mechanic, while I go on to study viola at the Royal Academy of Music – an MMus qualification.
I had a few consultation lessons with teachers there – the teacher sees if they’d like to teach you, and you see if you want to learn from them. One of the teachers said he likes fixing his cars and doing lots of technical stuff. He could see that it’s really useful that I have a technical brain and can really think through things in a quite removed way, which I thought was sort of interesting – and skills I got to reinforce here at Westminster Wheels!”