Alan Winslow and Morrigan McCarthy will launch an around-the-world trip on bikes to study and document the strange and understudied phenomenon of youth.
Okay, youth is probably the most overstudied phenomenon there is–what with their spending power, their trendsetting superpowers, and their forming of lifelong consumer habits.
But Winslow and McCarthy aren’t anthropologists or market researchers. They’re cyclists and photographers. Winslow is an artist and educator. McCarthy is a writer. They call their project The Geography of Youth.
Leaving in July 2011 from Fairbanks, Alaska, Morrigan and Alan will ride bicycles over 30,000 miles around the world, documenting through photographs, video, audio, and writing, the lives of twenty-somethings in over 50 countries.
Our writer Stacey Moses is preparing an interview with Winslow and McCarthy to be published next week. However the fund raising phase of the project ends this Sunday. So watch this video, and if you’re inspired to contribute to their project, visit their Kickstarter page.
What, you might ask, does this have to do with bike commuting?
It has to do with those lifelong habits.
Will this generation of crazy kids on bikes remain on bikes as they turn into unhip crotchety middle-agers? Or will they inevitably become infused with the “bikes are for kids” attitude that we encounter from fossil-fueled gerontocrats across so many cultures?
Stay tuned and find out.