The Future of School TravelEmma Sheridan, ModeShift
I invited Emma to speak at the conference as she is someone who I greatly admire professionally, and she is an inspirational speaker to listen to.
She is also hugely knowledgeable and influential in school travel as the chair of ModeShift (a forum for school travel professionals), Regional STA for London and she also sits on the Walk to School steering group (amongst many other hats).
Emma has been involved in the Walk to School campaign for a long time - she is one of the few people to have attended every walk to school conference - so was in a great postion to give us her thoughts on where we have come from as a sector, and more importantly where we are going.
Emma started with the doom and gloom. We all know that 2010 (when the "travelling to school initiative" comes to an end) is looming, and we could all be moping around waiting for our funding to be cut. Her point was, there have always been "nay sayers" and doom merchants, but the success of school travel has been enormous, fast and effective. Now is not the time to sit back and relax, but to look for the next opportunity and keep making ourselves indispensable.
In particular she talked about the communities that are fighting to keep their local schools open. They are now using school travel plans as part of their arsenal of weapons - and telling council leaders they have a choice: have children walking to their local school, or driving to a school miles away (and blocking up the roads).
Emma's vision is for school travel plans, and sustainable school travel, to be part of the mainstream community: "just something we do" rather than something special. Sustainable school travel is now part of so many other different agendas - eco-schools, sustainable schools, healthy schools etc. It is up to us to make sure that the people delivering these agendas locally can't do without us.
At the end of her presentation, Emma showed a beautiful sunset, and pulled out the corny line: "the futures bright, the futures orange" (maybe she was refering to our orange friend Strider?). While I can't condone the corniness, she is right - the future is bright, and it is what we make it!
1 comment:
I thought Emma also made a good point that you don't just need money to do interesting work, when she was commenting on the video by the students from the Royal College of Art. Their work was really good in showing how changing the physical environment, even for a day and for next to no expense, can change people's perceptions and attitudes to walking.
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