Pilgrims Pit contacted Potteries Hackspace looking for help to make a pedal-powered generator. Why do they want to generate electricity from pedal power? We will get to that, but first: who or what is or are Pilgrims Pit?

The ‘about’ bit, in the Pilgrims Pit Facebook page says:

A community art cafe, a space for creation collaboration production discussion and imagination. A mechanism for regeneration and direct public engagement.

With support from Art City, Pilgrims Pit got started at the end of October 2015, and their focus is on engaging folk in Stoke town and creating a drop-in hub type space at 114 Church Street…

They are working with donations, found materials, and volunteers, and are letting the project grow organically; they’re also working with video to document their goings on in local area, as found on their YouTube channel.

The name includes reference to the Two Saints Way – a 92 mile pilgrimage route which has its halfway point at Stoke upon Trent. The name also includes the words grim, and pit, and the whole things is open to interpretation…

Pedal power

So that’s them, where does the Potteries Hackspace come in? In general there seems to be some obvious overlap in our objectives, and there is on going scope for collaboration; in the first case is their motivation for contacting us:

The Pilgrims Pit needs its electrics completely re-doing, and to raise funds for the materials needed to do that they are planning putting on a battery powered gig.

they have approached Potteries Hackspace seeking knowledge and skill shares towards a pedal powered solution…