Inside the grass­roots bik­ing move­ment at the heart of If The Streets Were On Fire

In 2017, Alice Rus­sell was attend­ing Crit­i­cal Mass, a Lon­don-wide move­ment of cyclists who reclaim the streets for mass rides of free­dom and com­mu­ni­ty. A pas­sion­ate cyclist, she had been attend­ing for years but this year some­thing was dif­fer­ent. ​“I start­ed to notice on one of them that there were loads more kids wheel­ieing than I’d ever seen before. I just fell in love with them. They were so raw and row­dy and wild and beau­ti­ful and spectacular.” 

These kids led Rus­sell to dis­cov­er Bikestor­mz, their own move­ment of group rides – one decid­ed­ly wilder, younger, and more expres­sive. Bikestor­mz also holds a more focused goal: to give young peo­ple from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds an alter­na­tive to crime, through pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty in bike rid­ing. Or as they put it: ​“Bikes up, knives down”. This is the focus of Russell’s debut fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary If The Streets Were On Fire. 

Russell’s doc­u­men­tary is remark­ably warm and hope­ful. Beau­ti­ful­ly shot scenes of grace­ful, dar­ing rid­ers cap­ture care­free moments of free­dom on oth­er­wise trou­bled faces. It’s impos­si­ble not to fall in love with its cheeky, bold, inspir­ing cast of rid­ers. This is essen­tial, as the film seeks to make a vital per­cep­tion shift.

Streets most pow­er­ful moments come from Mac Fer­rari, a sort of father fig­ure to the Bikestor­mz com­mu­ni­ty, as he wres­tles with local coun­cils and the police to sim­ply find a space where young peo­ple, pushed to their lim­its by aus­ter­i­ty, can be free and safe. He’s a self­less, poet­ic and instant­ly like­able leader, but his frus­tra­tion is pal­pa­ble as he comes up against resis­tance on all sides. The rides in the neu­tral ground of cen­tral Lon­don are often swift­ly shut down by police, igno­rant of their impor­tance. Mean­while, no attempt is made to under­stand why the spaces offered to Mac – in prob­lem­at­ic post­codes on the very out­skirts of Lon­don – to organ­ise unin­ter­rupt­ed rides are unwork­able. To cap things off the pub­lic often see these groups as, at best, a nui­sance and, at worst, threat­en­ing, dan­ger­ous and – that most loaded of words – ​‘anti­so­cial’. 

Around the time Rus­sell first start­ed try­ing to film Bikestor­mz they’d had some neg­a­tive press that missed the point and so were wary of the media. Speak­ing to young rid­ers, she was repeat­ed­ly point­ed towards Mac – if it was cool with him, then every­body would be on board. She first met Mac in his bike shop in Hack­ney, a free hub for kids who oth­er­wise couldn’t afford their first set of wheels, or to get their exist­ing ones repaired. ​“He was in such a poet­ic mood,” she remem­bers, ​“He said, ​‘In life, you have to put kids on a track. If you don’t put them on a track, then they’re walk­ing on the grav­el, and you can’t com­plain when the grav­el gets kicked up in your face.’” She was hooked. ​“He just basi­cal­ly saw all these kids who had been aban­doned by the world and by soci­ety and knew that they need­ed an out­let, need­ed some guid­ance, need­ed some hope. The bike became the vehi­cle through which he could do that.” 

The film’s oth­er main focal point is a lit­tle more sur­pris­ing. Rather than zero­ing in on one of the many young rid­ers, Rus­sel fol­lows an old­er par­tic­i­pant, Miles. Miles’ younger days are an exam­ple of what hap­pens when some­thing like Bikestor­mz isn’t around. Now a fam­i­ly man who just wants to be a good father and ride bikes, his dark past keeps catch­ing up to him. He shows not just where these kids would oth­er­wise be head­ed, but how dif­fi­cult it is to leave that life behind once it has a hold on you. His sto­ry injects a fear and para­noia into the film that is cru­cial in telling the sto­ry of any one of the young rid­ers who zip across the frame – a feel­ing that rules their lives and that for many, Bikestor­mz holds at bay. 

It’s an astute choice and one that start­ed by chance. Rus­sell had seen Miles around, but he was always qui­et and with­drawn. One day she was hang­ing with a group of rid­ers after film­ing was halt­ed. ​“Miles just start­ed talk­ing, and Miles didn’t stop talk­ing,” she remem­bers fond­ly, ​“Miles has nev­er been asked. What does he think? What does he feel? I can’t put words in his mouth but for the first time I think he felt empow­ered to have an opin­ion, because maybe before he didn’t think that his thoughts mat­tered.” Miles is the yin to Mac’s (jus­ti­fi­ably) more guard­ed yang. He opens his whole life up to Rus­sell and lays bare every­thing that is at stake for a move­ment that the police at one point say ​“has noth­ing to do with knife crime”. 

An ear­ly draft of Streets fea­tured more root caus­es, more pol­i­tics, and more sta­tis­tics. On screen­ing it for friends though Rus­sell realised that took away the cru­cial human­i­ty that makes the final cut so mov­ing. A few peo­ple had point­ed her in the direc­tion of Xan­na Ward Dixon – edi­tor on Poly Styrene: I Am Cliché – and the pair end­ed up work­ing togeth­er on a new cut. ​“She has an incred­i­ble skill for mak­ing you feel stuff and it just felt like the thing that was miss­ing,” Rus­sell says. ​“You need the human­i­ty. These young peo­ple would just be like, ​‘No one’s ever asked me what I think before. No one cares about us. No one pays any atten­tion to us.” The final cut asks just this. With Mac and Miles as the main focus, the film’s true heart lies in the small moments with the young rid­ers, through the snip­pets of play­ful con­ver­sa­tion or the tough facades that are clear­ly paper thin. These moments make the sta­tis­tics that hit at the end all the more powerful.

There were plen­ty of learn­ing curves like this for Rus­sell along the way. When she start­ed mak­ing If the Streets Were on Fire, she had made one short film and had a lit­tle expe­ri­ence in broad­cast doc­u­men­taries, but was total­ly self-taught. ​“I just had a strong intu­itive sense. You know, these peo­ple are amaz­ing. I absolute­ly want to hear them.” She fol­lowed this intu­ition through­out – just her and a cam­era. Every­thing is shot close-up and, in their midst, Russell’s cam­era places you in the eyes of the participants. 

There’s real­ly no crew beyond that. For the more break­neck scenes of rides and stunts, Rus­sell worked along­side cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ruben Wood­in Dechamps, whom she met on Spare­room. They began work­ing togeth­er after she raved about a scene in The Rea­son I Jump one day in their shared kitchen, not real­is­ing the gor­geous shots she was prais­ing were his. ​“I strapped him into the front of a car­go bike,” she says, ​“And he just had the best day, just mad guer­ril­la-style film­ing – real­ly dan­ger­ous – but he’s just one of those peo­ple that’s up for that kind of thrill.” 

Since the mak­ing of the film, Bikestor­mz has con­tin­ued to grow and is organ­ised a lit­tle more offi­cial­ly these days, but its biggest bat­tle still lies in chang­ing the pub­lic per­cep­tion of why it mat­ters. The streets are still on fire, but not every­body can see the flames. Russell’s film hopes to make them burn a lit­tle brighter.