Network Rail is joining forces with Young Scot, Scottish Youth Theatre and North Lanarkshire Council’s Active Schools Programme to take its rail safety message to children and teens around the Central Belt.
Launched today on the Scottish Youth Theatre in Glasgow, the innovative new partnership is the biggest youth awareness-raising campaign ever mounted by the rail industry in Scotland.
It will target children and teenagers aged between three and 26 in nine local authority areas through quite a number initiatives aimed toward informing them of the risks of misusing the railway.
The scheme is being funded by the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme, that’s delivering a number of enhancements across Central Scotland’s rail network including the electrification of the most important Edinburgh-Glasgow Queen Street line and the road between Glasgow and Cumbernauld.
David Simpson, Network Rail Route Managing Director for Scotland, said: “The EGIP programme will see the electrification of over 100 miles of railway and critical upgrade works to other parts of our infrastructure.
“The partnership we’re launching today will let us be certain that teens living inside the communities alongside the railway fully understand the hazards of misusing it, especially in those areas where we’re electrifying lines for the 1st time.
“This initiative also offers a more creative and imaginative way of communicating our safety message to adolescents and we glance forward to working closely with our partners to further improve safety at the network.”
Mary McCluskey, Artistic Director of Scottish Youth Theatre, said: “We are delighted to be concerned with the delivery of this crucial message to kids across Scotland. Scottish Youth Theatre will deliver around 90 separate workshops for 3 years to 18 years, by visiting schools and youth groups.
“The workshops will use theatre arts based techniques to explore and to advertise awareness of potential dangers, exploring the choice making process and the prospective hazards linked to creating a hasty or wrong decision. The knowledge, self awareness and abilities learned in these workshops can even result in improved decision making capacities in all aspects of a tender person’s life.”
As portion of the initiative, Young Scot will target its members, aged between 11-26, through social media, on-line articles and outreach teams delivering awareness sessions. Young Scot also is implementing a Rail Ambassador scheme that may see teens promoting the EGIP project of their communities and delivering awareness sessions at the dangers of misusing the railway.
Louise Macdonald, Chief Executive at Young Scot, said: “It’s crucial that each one teens across Scotland get access to the knowledge and support they have to make choices that keep them safe. Raising awareness of rail safety is an important dimension to this and we’re delighted to be working with Network Rail and other partners to ensure these crucial messages are heard. By recruiting and coaching young volunteers as Rail Ambassadors, we are able to be supporting youngsters to take the message on to their friends and peers in a relevant and accessible way.”
Councillor Jim Logue, Convener of Learning and Leisure Services at North Lanarkshire Council, added: “North Lanarkshire’s Active Schools Programme will target primary and secondary pupils during PE lessons, after school activities and in community hubs, with an initial take care of the Cumbernauld area where electrification works have recently commenced.
“Active Schools can even run Easter and summer holiday activities for children – times of year when incidents at the railway involving adolescents traditionally increase.”
The scheme is usually being supported by the British Transport Police, who will provide liaison officers to spotlight issues and locations along the road of route, and the broader rail industry in Scotland.
