New This Girl Can campaign focuses on women and cycling

Sport England and British Cycling are partnering on a new "This Girl Can" campaign designed to highlight British Cycling's recreational, women-only bike riding programme, which offers hundreds of free bike rides across the UK.

The HSBC UK Breeze initiative has attracted 250,000 participants since its inception in 2011, helping women to overcome barriers to participation such as lack of confidence, fear of judgement and simply fitting activity into a busy lifestyle.

Using a series of targeted social media films and image adverts, the six-week campaign will mirror previous bold and eye-catching This Girl Can campaigns, showing how women, regardless of age, background, fitness or experience, can take up cycling and overcome those barriers in a judgement-free environment.

Kate Dale, Sport England's campaign lead for This Girl Can, said that the huge number of women attending HSBC UK Breeze events every week showed how effective the programme had already been: "This Girl Can is designed to break down the emotional barriers women face when considering exercise. One of these emotional barriers is fear of judgement around capability, and HSBC UK Breeze is brilliant at addressing these barriers with friendly and knowledgeable female ride leaders who help attendees to build their confidence and skills."

Faye Downey, women's cycling project manager at British Cycling, added: "We are constantly looking at innovative ideas and projects to get more women on bikes, and we are excited about this campaign's potential to introduce HSBC UK Breeze to a new audience and put cycling on the radar of more women."